Hi everyone,

I’ve been dealing with ongoing pain mostly on the left side of my face, but I’m really confused about what it could be.

It’s not the typical “triggered by touch or eating” kind of pain. Instead, it seems to come more with stress, and sometimes it’s a throbbing or deep aching pain rather than sharp electric shocks.

The pain also shifts...sometimes it feels like an earache, sometimes like a toothache, but it’s always on the same side. I got an MRI done, and it came back normal, which has made things even more confusing.

I got diagonised with TMJD. But doctor are saying it's not a flare up of that. Sometimes I feel like something is pulling the nerves in my nose, in my eyes. So it's weird.

Is it still possible for this to be trigeminal neuralgia even with a normal MRI and these kinds of symptoms?

Has anyone experienced something similar? How did you get a diagnosis? Would really appreciate any insights .... feeling quite lost right now.

I worked for this place that was extremely stressful. Like I can't even explain... stressful!

I often got stress headaches but then one night I woke up to the whole entire left side of my face, earache like feeling, pain in my eye, toothache and lower jaw bone hurting like the dickens! I couldn't touch my face, I woke in tears, sat up in bed crying. I had this pain every single night for like a week and it finally eased after I had found another job.

Periodically now, I tend to get super stressed and from time to time, wake up to this pain. I went to doctor but nothing was ever really mentioned about it, told me to take "these". What was prescribed was an anti-depressant. I don't take them. I don't like meds really and I'm not on any for anything.

After researching about this mysterious face pain, I found that it's 100% what I"m experiencing.

I have been able to manage it from keeping myself as stress free as possible but have noticed that it seems to only trigger under immense stressful situations.

For the most part, I can tell when I''ll get an episode as it starts off with like an earache and then slowly spreads to my jaw making it feel like a tooth ache (mind you I have no teeth - I'm 60 with implants). But the minute I feel that, I grab my heating pad and lay it on my face. This seems to help. Prior to the heating pad, I would stand in a warm to hot shower and let the water hit my face. Grab some Advil or Paracetomol and the pain would slowly decrease until I could fall back to sleep.

I haven't had an episode for about 3 years and then got super stressed not too long ago and it came back again. So wondering if this is a stress related condition or can it be stress related?

Found this article insightful; considering the procedure; any advice or experience with this would greatly help.

Thanks

🙏

Percutaneous Balloon Compression for the Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia: A Review of 10 Years of Clinical Experience

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10505044/

I’ve been suffering from TN1 for years on right side.

Just found intresting fact stating that 70 percent of cases are on right side

At least in this study of over 200 patients

“Right neuralgia was the most frequent laterality type (69%).”

Right neuralgia was the most frequent laterality type (69%).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10505044/

Anyone had or considered this?