Acupuncture as an Adjunct Treatment for Trigeminal Neuralgia

Since being diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, it went from bad to worse.  Even with the maximum dosage of Pregabalin and a thrice-a-day dose of Tegretol, the pain in my face was an almost constant 8-9 out of 10.  I like the following pain scale, because it also shows my mental state.

Not only was I reeling from the Tegretol, but I was almost incapacitated with facial pain, which somehow is so much worse than pain in something further away.  I was taking huge quantities of medications designed to control this pain and it just wasn’t working.

So I put all my hopes on a blood vessel touching my trigeminal nerve somewhere so they could perform microvascular decompression, which is this really cool brain surgery where they stick a little sponge between the blood vessel and the trigeminal nerve and voila, around about 7 years of no pain!

The MRI showed up nothing.  Everything was fine.  Nothing was even vaguely touching the trigeminal nerve.  There was no explanation for why I had trigeminal neuralgia.

I had a complete meltdown.  I was really banking on the MRI showing something, and it didn’t.

The next day I booked in for acupuncture.  I have now had three acupuncture sessions, and I’m just about to go to my fourth.

After the first acupuncture session my pain went down to a 2-3.  I stopped taking my midday Tegretol, so I was down to twice-a-day Tegretol.  After my second acupuncture session, my pain went down to a 1-2.  I was moving that week, so every once in a while I would have a flare up to a 7.  The CBD Living Freeze (they don’t pay me for this shout out) has been a godsend for these flareups.  I roll it all over my face, fan the eucalyptus and menthol fumes away from my eyeballs (it buuuuuurns), and my face feels normal again!

I have a mild worming pain across my zygomatic arch right now, and a bit of a bone eating sensation in my jaw, but the consistent pain rarely gets above a 3.  As I said before, I am just about to go to my fourth acupuncture session, and once my nerves have settled down from that I shall drop my Tegretol down to once a day.

My goal is to completely come off Tegretol and regain my brain and my waistline!