Two weeks after Surgery

General
1

Hello,

I was operated two weeks ago. My surgery went well. Fortunately, there were no post OP complications and I didn’t have to take the pain killers. I could eat normally and no pain around the operated region. I felt dizzy and less energy in my head for 2-3 days, but that I think is quite normal considering the possible loss of blood during OP. The doctors told that they removed around 30mm from total of 47mm.

However the reason of my operation was sharp electric like pain under my tongue due to which I had less energy while speaking affecting the fluency of my speech. I observed that that problem is still there after the OP. I waited for a week but didn’t have the feeling if the problem is gone.

Few days back, it just came into my mind to change my sleep position. Because I started thinking that this problem started around a year back and around that time I set my sleep position towards the right side. Before that I slept randomly left or right. In the last few days, I changed my position to left and started observing that the pain is quite gone for most part of the day. Now I am giving some more days possibly weeks, to come up with some concrete conclusion. My initial thoughts are my hypglossal nerve which comes under the tongue and responsible for tongue movement is slightly compressed by upper part of Styloid Process (Eagle) and when I sleep on my left shoulder, the nerve got released a bit reducing the pain. And during the operation, the doctors remove the lower part of styloid and probably the hypoglossal nerve is still in contact with the Styloid. That’s why operation didn’t apparently relieved my symptom. Can come up with something more concrete in the next days/weeks.

I was wondering if there is some test in which one can see the nerves?

Br Ali

2

Glad that your surgery went well, and I hope that your sleeping position carries on helping with the nerve pain you have. I guess if your remaining piece of styloid process is at a bit of an angle it could still affect the nerve, although you’ve not had long post-surgery to heal completely- it can take even up to a year for nerves to heal properly. And unfortunately the styloid processes can sometimes have damaged the nerve beyond repair so sometimes people have been left with some nerve pain.
The only scan I know of which can show the nerves and any compression as they leave the base of the skull into the neck is a Fiesta MRI. I think it’s a fairly new scan and looks in far more detail- I read about it on the Ben’s Friends Living With Facial Pain group’s page. I’ve not heard of anyone on this site having it, but it does seem to be used a bit more commonly in patients with TN to look for nerve compression. How easy it is to get one or how many hospitals offer it I don’t know.
Hope that you continue to heal well, and hope that the pain goes!