New pain...

I have a new neuralgia.  Fun times.

Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia has to do with the 9th cranial nerve and can cause flares in the back of the throat and tongue, tonsils, and middle ear.  My flares are happening at the back of my tongue on the sides where it is attached.  Sometimes it is both sides; sometimes it is just the left side.  The pain is as brutal as the Trigeminal Neuralgia flares, but the flares are also as short.

I simply cannot put into words the despair these flares have brought to my mind, body, and soul.  SIGH.

There are two medications that I can try, that I can add to my current combination of gabapentin, baclofen, and duloxetine.  However, both are Tier Three drugs.  That means another $45 a month.  I do not have that.  At all.

I also have started having esophageal spasms.  The first time, I was dead certain that I was having a heart attack.  I even hastily chowed down baby aspirin.  But when I got better, I was a bit perplexed.  The second time, I realized the pain felt like it does when I cannot swallow and food is stuck in my esophagus.  However, it was many, many times worse.  I tried swallowing and swallowing and swallowing and the pain subsided.  The third time, when the swallowing helped again, I was most certain that it was my esophagus.

Usually, when I diagnose something, I gleefully tell my GP.  She laughs, but as I have been right every time I dare to do so, she also does not mind my pronouncements.  This time, I merely described the pain and she diagnosed me.  I think I couldn't summon any glee because this is a terrible diagnosis.  You know, because she cannot do much for me.  Her main advice was to avoid drinking cold liquids.  I already do that because of my now crazily sensitive teeth.  Her only other suggestion was to try to increase my amlodipine.  Do you remember why that is not the best suggestion??

I take a beta blocker to help with syncope and to blunt the spikes in my blood pressure and heart rate when stressed.  Amlodipine is a calcium channel blocker.  It used to be that the two were not prescribed together.  That thinking has changed, but it does mean that my blood pressure can trend even lower than it already does.  She waited a month, but my pitiful begging moved her this month and I am starting a higher dose.  As is I just started a higher dose today, because I suddenly got chicken about starting and put it off for  a while.

With amlodipine, the longer I am on it, the more it builds in my system.  So, I will not know what this change will mean for me for a while.  Of course, I could keel over from dangerously low blood pressure on the morrow.  One never knows.  SIGH.

Another new pain I have is this constant needling pain in the top part of the inside of my right middle finger.  Specific, I know.  That is why the EMG will be on my right arm and not my left.  I'm getting more activity in my right hand than my left.  SIGH.

A final new neuropathy, but not pain per se, is vibration neuropathy.  Yes, it feels as if a cell phone set on silent is going off in my body.  Wherever the nerve is malfunctioning, that is where I feel the vibration.  It is wild.  It is weird.  And it is wearying.  Because it is nothing like the Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia, I feel as if I shouldn't complain.  But I am already over having to deal with the buzzing inside my body.  It makes sleeping difficult.  It makes conversing difficult.  It makes concentrating difficult.  SIGH.

The shocking in my hands is worsening.  My fingers jerk more.  My hands tremble.  I am having a harder time trying to control my hands, trying to use them.

I suppose I shall finish by noting that, since I started typing, the burning electrical neuropathy I face the most started firing off from my upper shoulder, down to the inside of my arm, through my elbow, and toward my inner wrist.  A pulsing agony that repeats every few minutes.  SIGH.

I am weary of pain.