trigeminal neuralgia

[lunawolf1313]

I don't really know if this is what is wrong with me. I have a feeling similar to burning on my face back and now arms and have started me on tegretol at 600mg 3x day that seemed to be helping but now isn't....could I be acclimating to the drug?  I'm also on topamax 75 mg 2x day for unexplain head pain that they stil haven't pin pointed and they are still trying to call migraines but I have never known a migraine to last for months without a break and spike head pains that react to air pressure changes lasting only 2-4 minutes at a time, sometimes going on for hours..had 19 of them in 3 hours.

[Garth L Nicolson, PhD]

It absolutely could have started the entire process.  The short-term use of antibiotics is only useful for rapidly growing bacteria.  Many types of bacteria are slow-growing and less susceptible to antibiotics, especially a short course of antibiotics.

[Garth L Nicolson, PhD]

Tegretol is a seizure medicine that is used to treat a variety of conditions.  Patients have reported adverse reactions with this drug during long-term treatment and have also reported that it became less effective with time.

Topamax or Toplep has been used as an anti-depression drug for some time but is also used for treating epilepsy.

These drugs do show some adverse event reports in the literature, but it seems like your physician may be trying a few things to see what works with your system.

Your headaches could be caused by vasculitis or inflammation of the blood vessels in the brain.  Often this is caused by chronic infections, but these usually cause other symptoms as well, not just headaches.

[lunawolf1313]

Thank you so much for the insight! You have told me more in those few words than they havein all this time I so appreciate it. I have been so sick for months now and the doctors have run all kinds of tests and found nothing though the ESR and MCH was slightly elevated they said it was nothing to worry about....now my joints are starting to become very painful and I think its the tegretol but I don't know. Will be calling doctor again and insisting or getting new doctor to relook into the idea and checking me for vasculitis...again thank you!

[lunawolf1313]

I was having a problem with a tooth infection that was pulled 2 weeks before the headache started. They pulled the tooth when I had been in the antibiotics for 3 days...it was a really severe infection too. I am still feeling tenderness in the are where it was pulled. Could this have started all my problems?  It all started in May and hasn't stopped since.