Hello Ali,
Thank you so much for replying to me, and giving me so much information to digest, I really appreciate your response. I'm so sorry, I think I might have misled you with all my symptoms, I tried to keep it brief (as I've had loads of weird stuff happen to me this year) but I know the pins and needles and burning in my body is not the trigeminal nerve, this I have put down to the menopause. But, I am having problems with my face, which is separate to the body stuff and weirdly how it all started.
I started off with pins and needles in my chin, left side and that was my only symptom on this for quite a few months. 9 months on I still have the pins and needles in my chin, and this has spread from a small part of the chin to the whole chin and up to my lower lip. It can get a bit achy from time to time but it has constant sensation in it and is sensitive to touch, I can only describe it as pins and needles when I run my fingers over it (sorry, it's really hard to describe and I can't seem to find the words!
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/rolleyes.gif)
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I saw a Neurologist in April, and he thought he saw a very faint image of "potentially" a blood vessel pressing on the TN but said it would probably never develop into anything and sent me away with Amiltriptyline which was supposed to stop the chin sensation in a couple of weeks. Used the meds for 3 months, no change apart from aggravating the blooming BMS I think!
Since then, around 6 weeks ago (still with weird chin sensation) I started getting pain in my face....along the cheek bone, down into my upper lip, up my left nostril, sometimes in my ear, etc and I've been aware of that every day since. Mostly an ache, with the odd sharp electric type shock.
I'm now on a round of Pregabalin as I can't tolerate cabermazapine, week 5 of the meds and no change yet but I'm slowly building them up. I hate being on these drugs but I shall try them for a while at least to see if they work.
The pain is not searing, I can still function daily, get up, go to work and in all honesty, it's more of an annoyance just now than debilitating. I saw a second Neurologist last Friday as I was also on the NHS waitlist, gave him my symptoms and a disc of my MRI scans, and he said he thought it likely it was Atypical neuralgia but they would check my scans and get back to me. He also told me there are different spectrums so my symptoms might not get any worse perhaps?
I'm sorry for the long rambling message but I have so many questions... for what I have read about TN, most of the time it comes on suddenly, it's extremely painful and it's sharp, electric shocks but the Neurologist also said it could build slowly so I don't know.
Ali, I would love your input in this, having first hand experience of this. My heart goes out to everyone suffering from this illness, at its worse I've read it can be life changing.
I promise I won't panic
![Smiley :)](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/smiley.gif)
and I look forward to hearing from you again.
Thank you Ali xx