My MVD surgery was Sept 17th. I was pain free until Thanksgiving. That morning, I woke up, ate a bowl of cereal (nothing crunchy, it was Lucky Charms - yep still love the kiddie stuff), and 10 minutes later I had the exploding pain in my lower jaw. It felt like my teeth were going to pop out of my gums. It lasted about 5 minutes. Throughout the day I started getting the burning, stinging feeling in my gums, cheek, jaw, teeth, and it felt like it was even in the muscles of my mouth. This went on for two days and then the third day, Saturday, the fireworks started. The pain was popping around all over the place and it was getting stronger. By Saturday night I couldn't take it anymore. It wasn't the worst pain I'd felt from TN but it was exactly like the pain I felt in Oct 2008 when this TN started. I broke down and called the on call doc from my surgeon's office. I told her how I had been weaned down to 200mg of Neurontin a day (for the last 3 weeks) and had stopped taking Tegretol and Topamax several weeks ago - but in the last 3 days I had upped my Neurontin and started taking the Tegretol again in hopes it might help the pain. She sent me to the emergency room.
I just got back from the ER - they gave me a round of IV Dilaudid and Toradol and then gave me the option of being admitted and staying overnight. In the end I decided to go home and he gave me a prescription for Toradol and Zofran (for nausea) and new directions for the Dilaudid I already have at home.
I hope this works and that it's the end of the pain. I am to call my surgeon or neuro on Monday.
I am really sad this is happening again. I don't understand how or why. I can't go through this again, especially since I just had the surgery. I hope to get more answers on Monday.
