Mixed feelings on finally getting diagnosed
‘No cure, treatment seems to be hit-andmiss, and it gets worse as you go on’
PAIN is black art, according to one of the handful of various dental specialists I’ve been seeing. And as much as I put it off I eventually had to go to a practitioner of the black arts. Imagine if you have a toothache for 20 years. That’s pretty much where I’m at. And while there’s been various work done by various guys, and while I’ve seen the tooth-grinding guy (bruxism, such a great word), we have not got to the bottom of it. It is atypical, they say. There is no pathology. Sometimes I suspect they are saying very gently that it is in my head. Sometimes I wonder whether it is in my head. Do I call it in by remembering it? Just now I had forgotten it for a while and I suddenly realised it wasn’t bothering me. And now it’s back.
The thing is, to me this pain is as real as can be. And I can tell you exactly where it is. On the surface it is on the line between the gum and the tooth. I am convinced that if you looked there you would find a rancid gum. Beyond that try to imagine fangs of pain coming down through from the roots. It occurs mainly on one side but it sometimes happens in exactly the same place on the other side. But of course it’s probably not coming from there. It’s coming from somewhere between there and my brain, somewhere in the nervous system there is a faulty message being sent, that is conning me into thinking the pain is there. So maybe it’s not really real. It is in my head. Or maybe something short-circuited there at some point, and now I’m stuck in some kind of neural loop with a nerve somewhere fizzing and repeating this faulty signal.
None of it makes sense really. I try to make sense of it now and then. I note what works. Antiinflammatories seem to help one day, and then they don’t. Salty water gargling or rubbing on Sensodyne can help sometimes — or do they? Because if it’s a nerve thing, and it’s not real how does anything topically applied make any difference? Or maybe I’m just distracting the nerve. Fooling it like it fools me.
Since I threatened it, by making the appointment with the pain specialist, it’s kicking up unmercifully. It’s reminding me who’s boss. It is punishing me for my betrayal. And in fairness, we have been together for a long time. It is part of me now. And I can barely imagine being without it. But I have to start imagining being without it. Because otherwise it will never go away.
It was a huge relief after all this time to get some kind of diagnosis. So we are dealing with some form of neuralgia apparently. We will be trying injections before we consider anti-epilepsy medication.
As I digest this, feeling relieved to possibly have an answer but feeling quite emotional too, I go home and do what I should have done a long time ago. I Google it. Bad idea obviously. I spend a fevered evening following one link into another, mainly looking for some bit of good news.
People are pretty down on the whole neuralgia thing. No cure, treatment seems to be hit-andmiss, and it gets worse as you go on, especially if you don’t catch it early. The faulty wiring, the wrong pathway is fairly firmly engrained in me now. It will be hard to change whatever nerve habit has built up there. And possibly harder for me to let it go.
It probably doesn’t help that many of the sufferers I read about have anxiety and depressive issues. I start to wonder if the word neuralgia comes from neurotic. It is referred to sometimes as the suicide disease. It says in one place the pain can be the most excruciating known to man. I dine out on this for a day or two.
Unwilling to accept the neuralgia, I light instead on a related thing called atypical odontalgia. I text the pain specialists to tell him of my diagnosis. He tells me I’m in the right ballpark. He then assures me that nothing is ever as bad as Dr Google makes out, and that while it is a chronic condition, most people do well over time with the right approach. The pain seems to ease a little at the thought that it will not be leaving me, that we will be together forever. Or maybe that was me relaxing and easing up on the pain.
The injections are next week, 50/50 chance they will work for a while. Between now and then I have to start believing that they could work, that I could be me but without this pain, always there, draining away at me, energy seeping out of those fangs.