It’s funny, I can clearly remember the first time my face hurt. I was waiting in a grocery store line with a loaf of bread, coffee cream, and a bag of potatoes. The line was slow, so I was perusing the tabloid newspapers headlines, and magazine covers. Suddenly, in a spot just below the eye socket, on top of the cheekbone, the left side of my face started to hurt.
“Oh no,” I thought, “not ANOTHER abscessed tooth!” Several years before I’d had two teeth abscess at the same time, one on the left around where the pain was and another in a similar position on the right side of my face. By the time I got the left tooth taken care of, it had gone past severely infected/abcessed to really “bad” (I won’t go into the gross details, especially since it’s dental stuff). Both teeth had first hurt through referred pain to another tooth, so I just assumed I had dental issues yet again.
While I remember the day clearly, and the year, 1998, I never recorded the actual date on a calendar. I think it was early spring or late fall – I had a coat on, but walking home there wasn’t any snow on the ground. That was just the beginning. Little did I realize when I got home from work and the store that the morning and early afternoon was the last time I didn’t have facial pain. 2011 is my year 13 painaversary year. I did get 2 diagnosis along the way: chronic atypical facial pain, and the impingement of nerves in my neck. And, lots of “be thankful it’s not trigeminal neuralgia” (I am thankful; that’s a terrible condition), not cancer, not ________ (fill in the blank). The left side of my face feels like a combination of a severe sinus infection, several abscessed teeth with cavities, a black eye, and someone pressing down hard on my face with their thumb. And, that’s on a good day.
In a similar fashion, I can remember the first time my IBS manifested itself. I had made my special two-day pasta sauce, and invited friends over for supper. We had salad, pasta and sauce, some wine, and perhaps dessert. Coffee for sure. After they left, my stomach began to bloat; it just got bigger and bigger with my skin feeling stretched and raw. My colon “hurt,” and felt like it was on fire. Now the year I’m a bit hazy on, but I’d guess 1978 or 1979 because of remembories of the kitchen and some snippets of the conversation. Fall because we were talking about birthday plans (for me and for one of the guests). The next morning, my stomach was still distended, my colon was cramping, and it felt like I was trying to digest shards of glass.
Thus began my IBS journey. There are lots of milestones I could mark with my IBS. For example, early on the doctor I complained to the medical board about, and then, years later and a thousand miles away getting one of his “adoring” students as the specialist I was referred to. – go figure the odds on that one! Years of “well, it’s only IBS, be thankful it’s not Crohns” (knowing folks with Crohns I’ve always been thankful it wasn’t that disease!).
Previous causes of pain I remember too: my first period happened at the exact same time a man first walked on the moon and my first real migraine (up til then it had just been bad headaches) when I was 16.
The other health issues I now deal with just seemed to manifest themselves. My memory (probably due to the heavy-duty opiates I used to take for my facial pain, strange sleep patterns, the foggy-groggies from other meds and fibromyalgia) is shot. I know that the traumatic loss of my job in 2004 and attempts to find another sent me spiraling downward.
Most of the other symptoms I have are post-2004 or existing ones got worse. Sometime along the way, I lost my short-term memory. I developed chronic atypical odontalgia (which means healthy or root-canalled thus “dead” teeth hurt as if they are abscessed or worse). My IBS became a daily distention and painfest. My neck started constantly spasming. I developed osteoarthritis in my jaw, neck, and spine to go along with my overall osteoporosis. I lost my inner thermostat, so that my body temperature fluctuates wildly, and not in sync with the ambient temperature. I became chronically exhausted due to meds, sleep issues (I usually only sleep in two or less hour units; yet sometimes I lose a day to sleeping in longer chunks of time) and possibly fibromyalgia and who knows what else.
Somewhere on a calendar is marked the date I had an appointment with a rheumatologist (referred by my regular doctor) who told me I have fibromyalgia. That was the fall of 2010. I’m still not sure I do. But that’s another whole blog entry! 
Some days are dark; the chronic depression that waits in the corners of my mind for a chance to take center stage struts out. Then there are only tears and more tears. Tears of what might of been, what should have been, want cannot be. The negative Bluray DVDs of all my disappointments, my hurts, my losses, my defeats plays in an unending loop.
Other days contain light: I get a nice email or comment on my blog from a cyberverse friend, I had a good trip to the grocery stores (2 stops over on the train), I had enough energy and interest to finish a task. The snowdrops have pushed their way up through the frozen ground and snow. A new or favo(u)rite bird drops by our feeders.
Most years I’m glad to see December 31 and the closing of another year, with the wish that the new year will bring treasures, pleasant surprises, calm, inner peace, redemption and most of all hope, laughter, and sunshine. In a sense, I mark January 1 as my painaversary; adding another year to my symptoms.
And, at midnight on December 31, hoping that this is the year that the pain will stop or lessen, I’ll figure out my food intolerances, my doctor and I will hit up the right med to actually elevate my mood (rather than just stopping the tears), I’ll be more positive, I’ll get my energy back, good things will happen. A year to remember with fondness; a year to celebrate with joy.
Disclaimer: I am not a health care professional. While I blend antecdotal information with findings from research, I am by no means in a position to offer specific medical advice.
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, unusual, and have no underlying causes. Actually, so too is my chronic facial and dental pain.
