Originally Posted by
canklecat
Very familiar, definitely can relate. It's hard to convey to folks who don't suffer those pains the full extent of what it's like.
Anyway, I'm considering something like botox injections next time I experience trigeminal neuralgia, migraine or cluster headache. Meanwhile I've tried to identify and minimize the triggers.
My trigeminal trigger is when airplanes descend. Theory is pressure change on a vessel hits the nerve. It happens 50% of the time when flying. The Occipital seems pretty well controlled by the RF ablation from the pain doctor.
I get the same looks from medical personnel when I say my pain is a 5. I did not even use the pain medication after rotator cuff surgery, I finished a 600k brevet with a broken elbow, played in a state championship hockey game as a kid with a broken bone in my ankle, and the ER people did not believe my appendix was the problem (it ruptured) because, "I was not jumping off the ceiling like most patients". I was seeing a Chiro for shoulder PT post surgery and I mentioned to him I had this annoying level 4 pain in my mid back and I usually snap it back in with a really hard sprint up a hill on my bike. He looks at it and says my lower thoracic rib "disconnected", so, he lifts me up like a bear hug and jerks me and there is this loud pop. The pain immediately went away. I said thanks, that was annoying. He starts laughing and I asked why the laugh. He said that is the most common complaint he sees and the lowest he has had a patient score that pain was a 7 and usually it is an 11 with them coming in the door howling. I gave it a 4. I have come to the opinion the pain scale is not linear, it really is logarithmic. And if someone has only felt broken ribs or something like that, they cannot comprehend what nerve pain can feel like. I had one spine surgeon tell me that he does not operate on patients unless they are at least an 11. Basically, he thought I was being a baby with a pain of 6-7.
WRT to my heart stopping, that never happened until I started having nerve pain. I was told it is impossible for nerve pain to stop the heart but every time I wake up due to the heart restarting, I am in severe pain. And, when my pain is in reasonable control, I have fewer episodes of my heart stopping while sleeping.
The best idea I can give someone with some heart issues like in the article is to see cardiologists with an appreciation for those of us who like to exercise. They will thoroughly check you out and if they clear you for exercise, just try not to let it worry you. Easier said than done but that is all you can really do. If they want to do ablation or give you medicine, it doesn't hurt to get a couple different opinions either.