Is this where the bone is?

Hi everybody,

First, thanks so much for all your help with my last post. I feel like I have an action plan (which is to get 3d ct scan, review with ENT) and then go from there. I was told on my last post to look for some pictures of extraoral surgery of ES, but I have to say, I'm just not finding anything that is helping me - my brain is just so not technical, and a lot of the photos are. So....I was wondering if you could take a look at these two pictures and tell me if you think this is where the hyoid bone is, or styloid process, or whatever it is that causes this - all I know is that this is where most of the pain happens, and there's a hard little bump there, and that the pain is bi-lateral (much less so on left side), and that I also feel the pain in my ear, back of my throat (I think, it's hard to pinpoint) and sometimes in the lower portion of my cheek, just above my jaw. This little spot (looks like a big freckle in the photo, lol) that I've marked on my neck, does anybody know what that is there?


Julie, that's right about where I first felt Eagles pain. It felt kind of like I had a nail, or ice pick sticking in there. Right where you're pointing.

Interesting, because that’s where 80-90% of the pain is, the rest is spread out in weird, more random areas of my neck, on the side, in the front, sometimes under the chin, definitelyin my inner ear, and sometimes cheek are.
Does this sound about right? I should also mention, and perhaps most importantly, that I can feel a hard spot there, it used to feel like a hard little pea that I could move around and now just feels hard. Both ENT’s I saw kind of minimized that when I told them, that "nobody’s body is symmetrical."
But that hard spot is almost where all the pain is!!! So how could that be normal?
Is this my styloid process, or the hyoid bone, I have a hard time understanding what is what.
Would love anybody’s thoughts.
(This site is a blessing)

I have a hard spot there too, and I concur that is where 80 to 90% of my pain seems to come from, or at least the point in which it imminates (wrong spelling) from. After my left styloid surgery I no longer feel a prominent hard spot there, but it is massive on the opposite side, that's how I know my doctor at least did something when he snipped my styloid and left everything inside.

And I agree this site is a blessing, it is my opinion that while the people we know and love certainly care about our pain, they are also sick of hearing about it. And frankly we are sometimes the only people who know what each other are going through, total blessing indeed.

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Looks about right to me and the symptoms are right on. That is where the styloid would be. Check out Wikipedia. For

Temporal styloid process There is a short simple definition and even a list of common Eagle symptoms and particularly a simple diagram of the styloid process and the nerves nearby. Very simple non technical for those of us that like simplicity.