233_Directive wrote:
Hi. I have pain that ranges from moderate to severe in a couple of teeth on the maxilla, and a tooth way back on the lower jaw. It is unilateral on the right side, and after numerous dentists trying this or that and being stumped when nothing was helping, this one guy figured it was trigeminal neuralgia and referred me to a neurologist. I went to the neurologist appointment, and he said that due to my age it wasn't trigeminal neuralgia, but then he assumed that if it wasn't that, then it was a psychiatric problem where I needed counseling to learn how to cope with the pain. Even if it were purely psychosomatic, counseling could only hurt (unless I stumbled upon someone truly great at it), as in past experiences, it caused me to ruminate on the bad things about my life so that I would have something to talk about during the sessions and not waste my parents' money, so that ultimately led to my becoming depressed in high school/college. The best prescription if it's psychosomatic is hour a week physics lessons (going beyond the current level courses which I've studied before).
What he did not know when he concluded this, however, is that I already have good coping skills - despite being in moderate to severe pain an average of 6 hours a day, I'm not depressed and I am doing better in my classes. I distract myself from the pain by moving my tongue across the roof of my mouth on the non-painful side, and by reading math and physics. I do not become depressed because it does not make sense to feel miserable about something which you cannot do anything about, and as I am capable of choosing not to feel miserable, I do that.
He doesn't know that since treating my sleep disorder and actually getting adequate sleep, my moods have been freakishly even (prior to that, I was prone to anxiety and depressive moods and the like). Also, I typically have a flat affect, which he could've misinterpreted as someone who is sad.
Anyway, I am wondering - can hitting your face frequently as a child (average of maybe once a week over ten years) cause a nerve malfunction there? One thing that led me to speculate this is that I'm right-handed, so when I hit my face it was invariably on the right side. Because even if it's not trigeminal neuralgia (and I am skeptical of that diagnosis, as my pain is more the atypical type, with occasional paroxysms of the typical pain), could it not be the result of an injury of that nerve?
I am not a doctor, so I can't advise you one way or the other. My #2 brother (who I refer to as Gettysburg, since he lives near there), was the headbanger as a kid. I've never heard him complain about any kind of maxillofacial pain. (What I can't figure out is why he is NT and not aspie, since he was banging his head up until he was 11 or 12).
16 Jul 2013, 9:54 pm
