getting on, I mean, to my nerves

This entire year has been revolved around my nerves, my actual nerves, that is.  One of the many things that went wrong in my jaw surgery were some nerves were damaged.  Which nerves, that is, we have been trying to figure out all year.  On each side of my face, from the top of my head all the way to under my ear, it feels like I am getting shocked sporadically throughout the day.

My right eye is frozen (well, it droops over my eye) so we know the facial nerve was nicked but most of the pain was thought to come from the trigeminal nerve (if you are really bored, look it up).  Thus  we have done a nerve block on each side, radio frequency ablation (read: fry the nerve for 90 seconds until it crumbles and disappears, and lastly on the 19th, I went in and did something called a balloon rhizotomy.  They took a huge needle, stuck it through my cheek all the way back to the top of my spine and blew up a balloon at the end of it to 'crush nerves'.  An injection, right?  That's what I thought.  Sure, drug me up and inject away!  I came for my pre-op the day before and learned differently.  I guess this procedure has a tendency to slow the heart down to the point where it can often stop altogether (something about a nerve around the area that is connected to the heart) so they had to prepare me for that.  'Don't worry' - they said, 'we'll use the paddles and start it up again.'  Seriously?

One other precaution they took was they did an arterial catheter.  I guess they take a needle and dig it really deep into your artery so they can get drugs even faster into your system than an iv (although they gave me one of those, too).  They said not to worry about it because they would do it after they put me to sleep.  Okie dokie, do your thing boys.  I remember waking up to them taking that thing out and ouch!  I guess they did some pretty deep digging because this was my arm 9 days later!  Looked like beaten addict.

Well, the procedure sure did numb half my face (felt just like coming from the dentist) but sadly, it didn't touch my jaw or the side of my face.  We tried, though!  I was talking to a pain doctor today who thinks it might be the facial nerve that is causing so much pain and not the trigeminal nerve.  'Okay,' I said, 'numb that then.'  I guess that is not possible, there is no access point to it.

I made one more appointment with the original surgeon on Tuesday to give him one more chance to redeem himself and actually put some effort into trying to help me before I talk to a lawyer.  I feel dirty even typing that but a year of hell it has been and if this is permanent - well, I can't even think like that.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger!