Monday 13 October 2008

Losing Face

After nearly four years, my lingual nerve injury seems to have become a little worse, with a new symptom. While my left chin/lower jaw feels numb and pained to varying degrees all the time, the last two nights the numbness has radiated over much of the rest of my face. Have you ever had an itch underneath thick fabric, like jeans, so when you scratch you feel the pressure, but not the sharpness? That is how this feels, like my whole face (especially lower) is coming off of a shot of novocaine. It lasted an hour or so last night, and it began again about ten minutes ago. Maybe it has something to do with fatigue, as I've also been ill? The maxillofacial surgeons I saw in London this summer told me about the erratic behaviour of injured nerves (sometimes, for example, I feel pain in the opposite jaw; sometimes, for no apparent reason, the pain becomes very sharp), but this is something new entirely.

I'm posting this because I have been working off and on on an essay about my injury and its many varied effects on my life, as I go about and hardly anyone knows what I'm experiencing. That feels strange to a person so given to expression and expressiveness. I wish people could see it somehow, some twinge in the skin or the like; its invisibility upsets me more than I can explain--and so my desire to try to write about it.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:12 am

    Carrie that just sounds terrible, I had no idea. And you're right about wanting it to show somehow... it's easy to assume that other people are better off than they are, just because you can't see anything.

    If it's any comfort, and I know this is completely unrelated, I have a tendency for things to fall asleep when I'm asleep. One night last week I woke up with no feeling in either hand, up to the forearm. It's a little disconcerting when you wake up and your head's fallen asleep!

    But that's not serious (I don't think) and all it does is enable me to imagine your situation... keep writing - I think your instinct is correct. And best of luck with the doctors.

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  2. Anonymous10:24 am

    Please let us know where we can read the essay when it's ready for the world. I'd love to read it.

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