It’s funny. I haven’t yet been diagnosed with TN. Officially. But here’s how I got where I am.
Late 2015-2016:
One morning, walk into the shower, stand under stream, throw head back to shampoo – and I felt this weirdest little twinge in my head. A sharp little painful tug on my scalp – and I really thought something had tangled and tugged at my hair. Except that the tug and the pain – felt like it was coming from the inside. Like something was tugging at a single strand of hair from inside, somewhere behind my right eye. I know. That is a weird description, but that’s exactly how it felt at that time and the succeeding five to eight occurrences. A couple of times it happened elsewhere: once as I woke up and was sitting at the edge of the bed, another time at my computer.
And I am at my PC on average for three-quarters of the day. So it was not a purely random event – the shower situation had some strange relationship – but buggered if I could fathom what that was.
And on the 1-10 pain scale, these were 1s or 2s. Nothing more.
But… when you have spent a while (in 2006) as a post-stroke vegetable and various bits of your anatomy frequently return briefly to that vegetative state, and you wake up most days of your life in the years after that musing on how nice it would be to not wake up at all….
Then.. the inside of your head is like Roswell: Carefully monitored for any returning alien life forms, random sensations, things that go bump in the night.
Not Only When I Laugh... 