Tic tic tic tic...

The other official name for trigeminal neuralgia---apart from the grim "suicide disease" label---is tic douloureux. Descriptions of the tic usually get sidetracked into describing TN as a whole, so I'll fall back on my own experience. Naturally, one does not stand in front of a mirror during a pain episode, so it's hard to say what this part of the tic looks like to others.  What I had taken to be the whole of the experience was what happens when an episode is producing Mankoski level 9 pain: clinically unendurable. In those blessedly rare episodes I have felt a twitching tremor in the affected side of the face. I'm glad to be alone when this sort of thing is going on. Apart from an uncontrollable desire to moan and lie in a fetal position, it's really too much to think that one's face resembles something out of a horror movie.

Recently, I ran across an article (which I neglected to link) that offered a broader definition of the tic element. It is, this author said, not just the tremor, but a characteristic scrunching up of the face in response to the pain. In short, the effect of TN is significantly to distort the features during the periods in which it is going on.
It included an image which I immediately recognised as my face in those happy times when I'm getting whacked by the Beast two or three times a day.

Faces tell tales, they say, and apparently the tale they tell for people with TN is what's going on behind the face. When The Beast has been shoved back into its cage, for me when it's warm and pleasant and even the stray breezes are good, people often comment on how much better I look. Evidently, that happens because they are now looking at a face instead of a tic.

I'm trying to relocate this article and I'll post a link if I find it: even though the knowledge offers one more reason to run and hide.