The Pain Report

IT WASN'T MY DOCTOR who told me the most important thing I've found to diminish the debilitating pain of the trigeminal neuralgia which has made such an impact on me since late summer, it was someone who told me that using a conventional toothbrush to brush my teeth might be making it much worse and so it has proved over the past three days.   

Since then I've looked it up in legit seeming sites online and have learned a lot more than the medical advice which centered on taking debilitating drugs told me.    After years of taking doctors' advice - though I have always told them I would only take pain meds when it got unbearable - I found that one bit of advice given by a long-term sufferer was worth more than everything they told me.    As is so often the case, when it comes to doctors,  your successful treatment to a good extent depends on your luck and chance. 

I'm experimenting with those silicon finger brushes they make for brushing babies and pets teeth (didn't know those existed before she told me about them) and am looking for soft bristled brushes which it never occurred to me to try before this. 

Thought I'd pay on the advice I was given for free in case someone who reads this needs it. 

By the way, one of the things a doctor wanted to prescribe for me is a benzodiazepine drug that someone my age should never take - it says that right in the hand-outs they give you at the drug store.   I knew that because of the terrible consequences my elderly mother suffered because she took them when she was prescribed them so I refused those.   

Apparently they're handing those out to even those who the literature says shouldn't be given them like they handed out Tetracycline in the 1970s.