I went to a new neurosurgeon this week upon the recommendation of my pain management specialist for my trigeminal neuralgia. He was considered to be pretty good.

I’ve had TN Type 2 since 2010 and have suffered mightily off and on over the years. During that time, I’ve undergone many tests and many minor surgical procedures, mostly gasserian ganglion blocks. Last year I had three late in the year, but they didn’t help at all. My pain management doctor was about to pull her hair out and didn’t know what else to do, so that’s why she sent me to the neurosurgeon, hoping he could avoid cutting me open and instead do some laser surgery on my brain. However, when I last saw her in January, she put me on a new medication, as a last resort, and I’ll be damned if that hasn’t really helped. A lot. Before that, I was living on Percocet, popping it like candy to help with the pain. It was really draining, very wearing. I hated that. Since I started that medication, I’ve taken exactly two, and none over the past seven weeks!

Back to the new doctor. When I met him, he seemed very rushed. I hate that in new doctors. When you meet with a new doctor, they should take the time to get your history and find out what’s been going on, how, why, how long, when, etc. This guy just wanted to get through it and move on. I was put off. Then he told me he had never heard of TN Type 2. I was stunned. I thought to myself, here’s a doctor who specializes in brain surgery and he doesn’t even know what this is? WTF? I had to define it for him. Even then, he rushed me through it, like he didn’t even care. Which pissed me off. Then he told me about the two major types of surgical procedures, but this time I interrupted him and told him about the medication and its success and he sounded relieved. He said, well if it’s working, there’s no need to cut you open. And you’re on a pretty small dose, so you could conceivably go up quite a bit if needed before we’d need to do anything, so let’s just keep it there and see what happens. Sounded good to me. So that’s how we left it. So, mission accomplished. I made contact with a surgeon who could do surgery if needed, but am not going back until that time is necessary, hopefully never.