Trigeminal Neuralgia
Definition: Trigeminal neuralgia (TN), tic douloureux (also known as prosopalgia, the Suicide Disease or Fothergill's disease) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigeminal_neuralgia
Sorry, I am currently not addressing clients with TN, the cause is seldom understood and the chances of setting off an attack, as I did on myself, of 25 minutes with over a hundred nerve shocks to the face in each of those minutes is too likely. Please call me and I will help you by telling you what I have done and what worked for me.
THE LONG STORY
I developed a case similar to Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN) somewhere around 1999 but didn't know it at the time as it struck me only once or twice in a month's time and then would go away for three to six months. I thought it might have been a growth in my sinuses or a pinched nerve of some kind.
As I understand it, true TN is caused by a prolapse of the brain, causing pressure on the Trigeminal Nerve. I do not have that problem. My problem, and I suspect many more, is a referred pain caused by a knotted muscle the my neck.
I need to tell you that I cannot, and do not, diagnose any condition or prescribe any actions or drugs. That is for your doctor to figure out. But I can relate my own experiences, the studies of others, and what I think is working for me, may work for you, and why.
August 30th of 2010 I was driving home after finishing a massage therapy class when the TN for the first time struck hard and repeatedly. Electric-like shocks to the side of the nose and under the eye, on the cheek and lip, starting one “pop” at a time. It was like biting into a lamp cord! At first it was five or six times a day, then in two weeks it ramped up to 10 to 30 seconds of constant shocks to the left side of my face as it drove me to my knees, woke me up at night, and cut 5 pounds off my skinny 155 lb. body in one weekend – the sight of food would make me salivate setting off the shocks again and again.
After troubleshooting all that happened to me, including that when I looked up in the air or lie down on a bed the shocks seemed to go away for a short time. I noticed similarities to the trigger points (muscle knots) I had been studying for six months in massage school and started working on my sub occipital muscles, the layer upon layer of overlapping muscles at the base of my skull. In four or five weeks I reduced the “shocks” to my face from hundreds per hour to one or two light “pops” each week, mostly when I attempted to brush my teeth or wash my face in a shower.
As of this day, July 23rd, 2012, I was symptom free for 182 days before it "popped" me one more time after a shower. I checked the same spot in my neck and found the same sore spot was growing in size. After 15 minutes of massage the symptoms went away. When it pops up again I know what is causing it and how to make it go away. My TN has come and gone several times since 2012. My latest bout stopped when I addressed a knot near C7 in my neck and has cleared up faster than ever before.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about reducing TM with massage but I am my best testimonial! TM has too many variables to state that one way will work and another one will not. I’ll try and answer any questions I can my email is located on the CONTACT INFORMATION page on this website. I hope you can find relief without drugs or surgery like I did.
If you know anyone who suffers this debilitating disease please let them know that I may be able to help. Sufferers who end their life due to this disease make it only two years out before the suffering is too much to handle.
I will add links to this page and my LINKS page to aid those who are interested in more information or suffering. Free consultations, call me.
Kevin Burns, CMT
530-518-1871.
LINKS
Trigeminal Neuralgia Association of Canada - http://www.tnac.org/Newsletters/2004%20Newsletters/March%202004.htm
Trigeminal Neuralgia Association - http://www.fpa-support.org/find-help/free-services-and-information/
More to come
