After about two months of doctor visits, specialist consultations, dental x-rays, threats of more Botox, an extracted tooth and two replaced crowns, I think my face has finally stopped hurting.
The problem goes back several years. It started with some horrid, unpredictable facial pain one night that felt like Laurence Olivier had snuck up on me and jabbed a dental drill into one of my upper left teeth. I still remember this night as I was still married, and I wasn't able to explain to my confused and concerned husband what was going on. All I could do was cry.
This got me into the dentist early the next day. But after several sets of x-rays later, he couldn't find anything wrong. This didn't stop me from eventually bullying him into removing an upper back molar, as I was convinced it was the source of the pain. I was mistaken.
Next I returned to my brilliant endodontist, who took another set of x-rays and referred me on to a neurologist. He ran lots of tests, diagnosed a fair-to-middling case of tic doloureaux, and injected Botox directly into a facial nerve. This cured 90% of the pain for almost two years, but then it returned like a psychotic ex-boyfriend a couple of months ago. This time it hasn't been as bad, and it was different. More like a combined toothache and migraine.
However, this time it wasn't trigeminal neuralgia. It was thankfully simple: my bite had become misaligned, and my habit of clenching my teeth while I slept was the cause of the new attacks. My dentist removed the other upper molar to even things out (this wasn't fun, as the roots had somehow grown into my upper jaw) and replaced two crowns that I'd damaged over the past years. I looked so ghastly after the extraction that I was literally sent home from kung fu class the next day.
The only down side to all this is that I should really wear a mouth guard when I sleep, but they're utterly foul, especially when you wake up and have to yank it out. But I was able to make a Mouth Guard Lite out of a dental bleaching tray a few years back. It wasn't nearly as bothersome and held up for about four months.