The alarm goes off. I groan, hit snooze, and roll over to steal some warmth from my amazing human who also doubles as a walking space heater. The snooze alarm goes off and I whinge some more and convince myself I’m only going in for a little cuddle. Several minutes later I get a nudge awake and I roll myself out of bed. I stand up.
And promptly tilt over into the dresser.
That’s fine, there’s only a few centimetres between where I stand and the dresser, I’m not hurt in the least. I stand myself back upright and lean on the bed as I grab my pants, put them on carefully one leg at a time (I’m also deeply inflexible first thing in the morning, so this is sometimes quite difficult), put my jumper and slippers on, and totter out.
My right eye is just a blur, like I’m not wearing my glasses. My left eye works fine.
I stumble and list several more times on my way to the kitchen, but I manage to catch myself each time, usually with my feet, sometimes with my hands on a wall. The cats yell at me to feed them. Kettle goes on first, dog loses her shit because I’m up and that means breakfast, and the cats continue to yell at me. They all have me whipped.
I continue to teeter my way around the house, feeding the various beasts, making my coffee, my amazing human’s coffee, my breakfast, until at last I can sit down and not expend additional energy catching myself as I start to tip sideways. I subconsciously plan my routes to ensure I have either something structurally sound I can catch myself on, or something soft I can fall on, as much as possible. I’m glad my floofy creature (cat, she rules our lives, and she knows it and loves it) is more interested in floofing in front of me – tail up and elegantly tipped to one side, glancing over her shoulder as she chirrups to make sure I’m following her – rather than doing a surprise floof directly in front of / under / between my feet as I’m walking.
By the time I’m seated with my breakfast and coffee my right eye is back to normal, if feeling uncomfortable (I’ve been to the optometrist who says it’s all beautiful and fine), and I spend my mornings relaxing and waiting for my body to stabilise a bit more.
Throughout all of this my jaw burns. Well, not so much burns, as feels like it’s being eaten away. It’s a diffuse ache with no distinct boundaries but a tapering off around a central pain. Sometimes it’ll crawl down my mandible and into my chin. Sometimes I’ll have flashes of sharp pain across the roots of my maxillary teeth. More often than not I’ll have a frozen burning patch along the side of my nose.
I’ll browse through Facebook on my laptop. My fingers will lightly spasm as I go through, so I have to make sure the mouse is off to the side of the screen so I don’t accidentally click on something.
After a little while I’ll get up, wind my way to a shower, and get on with my day. I will have difficulty recalling things I did moments ago. I will stumble over words. My brain will supply me with an alternate word for the one I’m wanting, and I will have to logically work my way through an number of other words before I get to the correct one. I will sometimes have intention tremors.
If I’m lucky, the wobbliness will be done by 10am. Other times it lasts all day, and I will have to rely on my cane for balance.
I don’t know how much of this is the Tegretol or if this is an increasing severity of whatever is causing my trigeminal neuralgia. Hopefully I will find out soon!
Walk to Wellness 