Petrified of Trigeminal Neuralgia

[Tamz27]

I am a 32 year old female. About two weeks ago, i had discomfort in my upper molar on my left side. I went to my dentist who took an xray and could not find anything wrong. He sent me away with two tubes of sensodyne. A few days later, the pain got a lot worse i.e. throbbing/aching. In the meantime, my fear of trigeminal neuralgia (TN) surfaced as i knew there was a connection with teeth. As the pain of my toothache got so bad (keeping me up at night) - i made another appointment to see my dentist who said that i needed root canal treatment - i asked if this was necessary (also told him of my fears of trigeminal neuralgia) and he said that based on my symtoms, it was necessary.

After the root canal treatment, my dentist said i had irreversible pulpitus and said it was not trigeminal neuralgia. This obvioulsy was music to my ears but the next day after the root canal treatment, i started to feel pressure/very slight pains in my cheek/temple and upper head area so this made me panic and think it was trigeminal neuralgia and so the vicious cycle began again. I had a mini panic attack and called NHS24 and spoke to a senior nurse about my fears and she too said that it was very unlikely to be trigeminal neuralgia as the pain i would have been feeling would be excruaiting and i was also young. In order to get on top of the anxiety this has been causing me, i made an appointment to see a GP who i saw today. She also thinks it is unlikely to be TN and said that upper root canal treatment can affect the whole side of the face affected due to the sinuses etc. I am now back on citalopram so hopefully that will help.

Given that my dentist, a senior NHS nurse, a GP and my family think it is not Trigeminal Neuralgia, i want to believe this but i am finding it hard because i am stilll getting aches around my cheek/temple region. Any rational thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Serenity1990]

I've had similar sensations to this, it turned out to stem from my neck (cervical spine out of alignment). It might be worth seeing a physio to see if there's anything they can do, as they tend to be far better than GPs and the like with this sort of thing!

[UKmamainUS]

I agree - I was meant to see a neuro tomorrow for suspected TN, but the truth is, I have almost zero pain and even when I do it is nothing like described. I cancelled the neuro. Instead I have found that a lot of my pain is due to a combo of TMJ disorder (clenching) and issues with my cervical spine alignment. I have been seeing a physical therapist, chiropractor and deep tissue massage specialist and almost all of the pain in my mouth / gums has gone. I was very scared for a while there, especially since I was also under treatment for Occipital neuralgia, which has also been treated with the same remedies. Good luck, and really, it doesn't sound like TN at all from what I have read.

[Serenity1990]

It's amazing the issues cervical spine misalignment can cause! Aside from all the nerves going into your head and arms originating there, issues in the upper cervical spine can put pressure on the brain stem, causing body-wide issues, especially with vision.

I was getting the most awful headaches, right the way around the head and down the face. Two clicks from my osteopath and bye bye headaches! :)

[cattia]

Hi, I can understand your concern about this as the stuff online is pretty scary. I actually have a friend qgi has this condition. When she has attacks it's so bad that she can't speak. It is now controlled by very high dose medication, hers caused by a compressed nerve and she will eventually have surgery to cure it once it can't be controlled with medication. The thing that should reassure you is that she is 36 and the specialist said he had never seen the condition in someone that age before. It's really very unusual for younger people (and by that I mean under 50) to have this condition so it really is very, very unlikely that you would have it.