Facial Pain Awareness Month

October is Facial Pain Awareness Month! 💙

I have had facial pain for thirteen years now. Developing it at age seventeen (though I often wonder if I have been experiencing symptoms as young as thirteen), was a huge impact on me. It has not only caused chronic, at times unbearable pain, it has also affected me emotionally and mentally. Facial pain may be in the face and head but the whole body is effected.

Facial pain awareness is needed not only for cures, but for others to understand the struggle that I and so many other rare facial pain patients go through on a daily basis.

Having facial pain requires a strength that many of us do not realize we have until we start fighting this ongoing battle.

It's a fight that we are not alone in.

I'm thankful for the facial pain community, you all have been a light to me on days when the pain felt like it would drown me. Finding everyone a few years ago was the game changer I needed. I love and appreciate each of you.

We are warriors.

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Comments

Scars To Your Beautiful

I wished I could put into words what it feels like emotionally and mentally to be a chronic illness patient. Some days, it’s just a routine of taking your medications, going to your doctor appointments, pain, fatigue medication side effects etc. Some days it’s just normal to not be normal. Other days, like for me today, I’m crying. I’m crying because yet again, I’m facing another health battle. There’s a sting to this battle though. Because I have faced it before and well, thought I had won. Even my doctors called me a success story. And even used my case at a teaching conference. I held on to those words and was damn proud of myself for winning against this yet another rare disease. And one that left me with visible scars and insecurities. When you are a chronic illness patient, sometimes you get used to being sick, but please don’t mistaken that with being okay with being sick. Maybe some individuals are. Maybe I’m just not accepting of the fact that I have chronic i...

Today is International Occipital Neuralgia Awareness Day! What is Occipital Neuralgia (ON)? “Occipital neuralgia (ON) is a condition in which the occipital nerves, the nerves that run through the scalp, are injured or inflamed. This causes headaches that feel like severe piercing, throbbing or shock-like pain in the upper neck, back of the head or behind the ears.” - The Facial Pain Association. ON is rare, some numbers suggest 3 people per 100,000 develop it. There is no cure. A bit of my story with ON: I was diagnosed last year with Occipital Neuralgia (ON), though my symptoms first showed up in 2020. ON is very painful. My symptoms are electric like shocks and stabs to the back of my neck, head and behind my ears and tip of my ears. I also at times have a continuous burning ache on the back of my head and ears. My neck and back of my head feel like it is in a vice grip. I also have a crawling sensation. The pain level from ON can be very chronic at times...

Disabled and Loved

ID for accessibility: Photo of couple lovingly holding hands. There is a myth that needs to be broken. That myth is that people with a disability and chronic illness shouldn’t fall in love or be in a relationship. I have had chronic health conditions since my childhood. In my teen years my conditions became more severe and multiplied, I developed the rare condition of trigeminal neuralgia (though I would not receive my official diagnosis until almost a decade later). I remember the fear that struck me, "Who would want to be with someone with so many health conditions and who may not even be able to kiss them?" From an early age, I was taught I was a burden and undeserving of love. I was a "burden" to my parents, my pastor, my Sunday school teacher, and even to a supposedly loving god. Once my health conditions started showing up and getting worse, I was then a burden to a future spouse, if I should even date or find someone who wanted t...

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