Eye Pain: The Final Answer

Late last year, I blogged about having daily excruciating eye pain and how it was affecting my quality of life. At the time, there seemed to be no answer and no real relief from the pain except prescription painkillers which was The Worst Plan Ever. Didn’t want to become an addict or spend my life in a drugged haze (for the record, all they did was make me extremely dizzy and loopy. Not fun, especially when you were dizzy to begin with…). So I did some digging.

I consulted with my good friend Google on what could cause this. Because we’ve been around and around it — maybe it’s my eye. Maybe it’s my brain. Maybe it’s my cornea… When I discovered trigeminal neuralgia, I finally thought I’d hit upon something.

The trigeminal nerve is the nerve that branches off into three separate nerves and supplies sensation to the face. In classic TN, a person would experience excruciatingly painful electric-shock-like pain to one side of the face. And I got to thinking…I have facial pain at times which I’d called “eye migraines” and they affected the whole left side of my face — my eye (obviously), my cheekbone, my jaws, even my teeth and ear! I even got pain where I’d had surgery on the lower left side of my lower jaw. But only when I had one of these eye migraines. So, I got to thinking. I did some searching and discovered that yes, TN can cause eye pain, and sometimes it can be the only part of the face affected.

Well, holy hell. This was it. The answer I’ve been waiting — hoping — for for almost 3 years.

But did my new neurologist agree?

YES. She felt that it was highly likely that this was the case. And, even better, she prescribed me a new medication that is apparently the medication for TN. I’ve been on it for a total of 4 days now, and it looks promising. I had a rough start — nausea and such, but things seem to be getting better. And — get this — minimal pain. Let me say that again. Minimal. Pain. No more eye-stabbity horrible throbbing insane pain. The most pain I’ve had for the past few days has been a slight ache that comes and goes, and is hardly ever there.

I finally have hope for my future. Hope that maybe I can begin to live life to the fullest again. I can do more photography. I can spend more time outside. But most of all, maybe I’ll be completely pain-free someday.

I don’t have to worry about my stress level affecting how I feel at work, or have anxiety about having pain and trying to cope with everything and feeling like a failure because I couldn’t handle it.

But the idea of being pain-free — or even minimal eye pain — is my ray of sunshine.

And that is everything to me.