facial pain | WEGGIEBOY'S BLOG by Doug Thomas

I am a happy, positive person for the most part. I don’t worry about things I can’t control. It would be nice not to have experienced the effects of two major illnesses, especially the herpes zoster. I live with many more after effects from that disease than I do Wegener’s granulomatosis, which, ironically, is the more serious (potentially fatal) disease of the two. But live with those after effects I do.

The charge doctor at the regional hospital where I had initial treatment for shingles told me, “You’ll wear a beard after this,” in reference to the scars. I mumbled some obscenity under my breath at his blunt comment, which he delivered with a smirk. He was right, though it isn’t to hide scars so much as to distract others so they don’t bring up the reality I live with 24/7, something I am aware of without outside reminders!

It is possible to forget about the pain and scars if I involve myself in my videos or blogs, or when I am with friends or family. I sleep well, even without pain medication, though there are rare times a few aspirin help. A little baby oil on the scar helps loosen it up a bit, too. That helps reduce the discomfort, that perpetual tightness on the right side of my face.

The scarring impairs tear formation in the right eye, so I occasionally have pain associated with dryness. When I cry, only the left eye overflows. If I cut onions, the right eye can’t wash away the sting by itself. I have to manually flush it until the pain goes away. An itch forms in the corner of that eye that can be so severe I go nuts trying to stop it! It’s hard to scratch an eyeball itch, though the old standby of splashing cold water on the eye works best to break the pain signal to my brain.

Do you remember that old joke about the missing dog with one eye, three legs, no tail, and goes by the name of Lucky? Some days I feel like Lucky, but the mood quickly shifts when I see my little guys, Andy and Dougy, or I find a comment on one of my videos or blogs. Faith and a good attitude are major helps, too!

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I didn’t wake up this morning with the idea that I’d write about this personal issue. The pain this morning was a bit more severe than usual, and I needed to work through it, however I could. I feel better now! My fingers are a little sore from typing is all.

Since I probably am an expert of some order on the topic, I can share my experience with you. Talk with your doctor about the shingles shot. I don’t think they recommend it yet for people under 60. There’s a one in three chance you will get it. The pain is excruciating. You don’t want to experience it, believe me! Most people don’t have permanent damage as severe as I have. If you have an outbreak on your face, there is high risk to life itself. If it follows your optic nerve back to your brain, you better have your affairs in order! Here’s one site you can learn more about shingles:

http://www.cdc.gov/shingles/index.html

I understood that the postherpetic neuralgia (source of the “pain in the face”) ended after a time, but that the longer from onset of herpes zoster till treatment began, the more nerve damage there was. The more nerve damage there was, the longer the healing time. Oh, yeah. And some people never got over the pain. I predicted I was one of the latter! I mean, I tend to attract the worst, the least common, the most unusual manifestations of what can go wrong with the human body!

By August of 2007, the continuing pain affected my ability to work. I left work early on some days because of pain attacks, and the frequency alarmed me, although it all fell within my allowed sick time. I had a total of five weeks vacation a year plus holidays by that stage of my work life, and often I used vacation time for sick days because the pain pretty well killed any possibility of long trips. I decided to see a pain specialist, a physiatrist.

The doctor had me lie down on an examination table and bring my knees up. The examination involved a mini-cattle prod (similar principle, lower level of electrical shock), needles stuck into nerves, and little jolts of electricity.

I joked with the doctor about how I hoped I wasn’t about to become a galvanic experiment where she’d trigger a nerve to make my legs dance or something rude and embarrassing. She laughed, and the testing was surprisingly mild and easy. She’d stick a needle in, trigger the nerve, and her laptop recorded the results. She did this on both sides of my face to establish the degree of damage to the right side nerves.

She prescribed Gabapentin, which evened out the pain to a dull roar. She also prescribed Cymbalta for nighttime use. Between them, I had control of the pain at last!

Control, at least, until I retired early (see “who I am” for details) and ran out of health insurance and prescription refills. Then it was back to pain, if not so severe. I mean, the last time I screamed out in pain and threatened to join the Evil One’s minions or God’s Warriors, depending on which gave me pain relief first, was 2007! (I was serious then, however, and suffered a brief lapse in faith. To Hell with the devil, too. He also failed me! Ha!)

The shingles left me completely deaf in my right ear because of scarring of the ear drum. I have a lovely scar from my ear to my eye brow, and another from the corner of my right eye down to my lip. There is another scar from my right ear to my lower lip, which pulls the center of the lip to the right to where the corner of my mouth used to be. It’s all very complex…and painful, the worst part of the pain in my face. The scar is tight, which exacerbates the pain.