Today, October 7th, is Trigeminal Neuralgia awareness day. I feel like I really owe it to my mom who has this disease to make a post about it on tumblr to help raise awareness about it. She has been suffering though so much, and the only reason she has to continue living on and waiting for a cure is her family who has been supporting her since day 1.
Trigeminal Neuralgia is a disease that affects the nerves in one’s face, known as the trigeminal nerve. There’s one for each side of the face, and each nerve has 3 branches: in the forehead, the cheek, and the jaw. When these nerves are pressed against by a blood vessel or other obstruction, it causes COMPLETELY UNBEARABLE pain that cannot be stopped. My mother takes tons of medication that was perscribed to help her, but it doesn’t do much to help her other than slightly decrease the likelihood of a bad flare-up.There can be surgery done to free the nerve from what’s aggrivating it, and my mother has had that procedure done, but there’s a chance that it won’t work or the pain will come back. And that’s exactly what happened to her. Other than that procedure, there are no other known methods of curing this disease.
This disease is also extremely debilitating, for the littlest things can trigger flare-ups of pain. Sneezes, loud noises, bending over, getting up too fast, remaining active/walking for too long, doing dishes, cleaning the house, and doing laundry are all things that have triggered a flare-up for my mom. Sometimes flare-ups happen for seemingly no reason. She constantly feels a “burning” pain that never goes away, and flare-ups are described to feel like lightning strikes.
I’m on mobile and can’t exactly post any sources right now, but if you simply google the term “Trigeminal Neuralgia”, plenty of information pops up. I would also appreciate it if other people could reblog this post with sources if possible.
It would be wonderful if you could reblog this post and more people can find out about this disease, because awareness is the first step to finding a cure.
