Glad to hear you looked for the nearest UCC. Getting adjusted could also help with your sleep issues. I know it's a long drive, do you have anyone that would go with you? Getting adjusted could help your TN and understand why you have the pain to begin with. Just make sure that they know you are coming from a distance and would rather have the whole evaluation (consult, exam, xrays) plus the adjustment on one day instead of coming back.
maggie
I didn't see that there was a "next page", I just thought nobody replied.
msmaggie, that is something I would have forgot to do, about asking for the treatment the same day, you just saved me a very painfull trip to Kelowna. There are other therapists there I would like to see too... I need a "therapy vacation week"
Interestingly about my neck is that last night, and once a few days ago, I managed to sleep on my RIGHT side and none of the weirdness happened. My right thigh is the most consistently painfull area of my body, and sleeping on it is like chewing bar glasses without my dentures in [or like listening to Inhofe talk about clean coal] - very painfull.
As I sit here in the first hour after waking up from a "sleep on my right side" I have a mild pain on the right side of my neck, and into my shoulder... it may take some getting used to.
So I might conclude that just that slight pressure, or perhaps the position, of sleeping on my left side is tweeking the Trigeminal Nerve and/or the C4-5 nerve root area and thereby triggering a TN attack and/or these hallucinations... I have never heard of such a thing - have you? Anyone?
Hi, Fillmore,Originally Posted by Fillmore
I was just skimming your thread here and saw what I quoted above and just had to reply - quickly as it's getting late, but I did want to mention this as I've had similar symptoms to what you describe. I know I don't have TN but my pain always feels like nerve pain. Turns out it is probably "referred pain" and/or myofascial pain (that's fascial as in fascia, connective tissue, not facial). i.e. a neuoromuscular kind of thing from what I suspect may be upper cervical vertebrae out of alignment. I was going to a chiropractor for lower back issues in March and once we got those straightened out he started working his way up my spine until the last few visits when I pointed out a tight muscle, one of my left suboccipital muscles (a short muscle that attaches to the back of the skull and the cervical spine) between the ear and the mid-line of the skull, just about where you describe your tender spot to be, that has been tight for 2 1/2 years and I felt was causing my face, neck and tooth pain - or vice-versa. I just didn't know what was causing it to be tight until he adjusted C1 (I think - some one of the upper vertebrae). This chiro doesn't do the same kind of treatment as the NUCCA people (our National UCC Assoc.), who use x-rays and just a few pounds of pressure to make these micro-adjustments of the upper vertabrae. It was more like a regular adjustment, but way up on my neck. I had asked him about UCC and was skeptical when he said he did that, but was glad he went ahead and did it, because like you, the nearest one to me listed on the Web sites is hours away. I was sore (but not the same kind of "pinched nerve" sore - more a muscle soreness) for about 5 days after the adjustment, even re-aggravating things further down between my shoulder blades initially, but then on that fifth day everything began to release and feel better. And now my neck doesn't make all those crunchy, grinding noises when I turn my head!
Anyway, it could be the muscle spasms in your neck that are causing the nerve pain in your face, rather than the other way around, especially since many of your symptoms are not typical of classic TN. Those spasms could be caused by misalignment at the top of the spine - could even be causing the narrowing of the nerve channels further down, or vice-versa. I'm no doctor, just relaying my experience as I too have trouble sleeping with this and a few other things you mention. I never thought I would go to a chiropractor but finally went for those lower back problems and now I wish I'd gone over two years ago when this started again (been here/done this before). My sleep has improved 100%. From getting 4-5 hours a night total to last night when I slept for 8 hours! I also do better on one side than the other. I expect to need a few more adjustments since this has been out for so long and that suboccipital muscle is still complaining some and still tight but when it first went into spasm it felt as big around as my thumb and now it's more like a thin rope and softer. A few months ago all the muscles in my left neck, shoulder and back felt like steel cables and now they feel like cotton ropes. Oh, yes, the chiro also put my skull back on my atlas at one point. It was just a mild "click."
So I agree with msmaggie in trying UCC and I do hope this person works out for you. I know how painful the drive will be and if you can get someone to drive you, that will help. Or try asking if they know of anyone closer to you before you get all the way out there. Do take it real easy for 3-5 days after any adjustments as the muscles need to re-acclimate to having the vertebrae back where they belong and it may take a while for the nerves to calm down again, but if this is your problem, they should improve pretty quickly. Then again it could be a combination of things so, one step at a time.
Good luck and do keep us posted.
P.S. I have trouble posting, too - login seems to time-out while I'm writing. Not sure what's up with that - haven't spent much time here since the recent upgrades. Will ask around. There is now an auto-save every 60 seconds, so you can get back most of what you wrote, but best to write in a word processor or text editor and then login, paste in and post quickly. Here's a link to an explanation of the auto-save feature - http://braintalkcommunities.org/show...1093-Auto-Save
Last edited by JeanC; 07-05-2012 at 07:05 PM.
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