Warnings

It is the season of precursor pain, the dope slaps the Beast administers as a reminder that it is always there. Before diagnosis, I would get episodes three or four times a year, much like today's breakthroughs, two or three times a day, for weeks on end. Now it's usually just winter, but the precursor pain is a reminder: "Dude, you're just one chill too many, one late or forgotten dose, away from my claws. Beware."

In remission, one tries to live in the moment, with variable success. Precursor pain spoils that by changing the focus from the relief of now to the anticipation of what is to come.

I broke training and put one of my TN thoughts on Facebook a few days back. We had our first trace of snow, just enough to coat the grass, the deck, and the windscreen. It reminded me of how my daughter and I would tromp around the back yard on Nordic skis, on an inch of snow, whooping and hollering and greeting the start of ski season. That part of the father-daughter experience ended with adolescence. Then skiing, which had been part of my life since I was five or six, was killed off by The Beast. I remember the last two times I skied, once with my daughter, once solo. Both times I struggled through the pain, obstinately denying it.  That was before the diagnosis, when I didn't really know what I was up against.

I found myself, once again, trying to explain the TN worldview to a well-meaning innocent the other day. She had clipped an ad for Botox for migraine for me. I took it with courteous gratitude and without getting into the differences between actual Botulinum toxin and phenol injections, which I barely understand myself. I just explained that the therapy appeared to be off the table because it is potentially fatal and that makes neurosurgeons nervous. (The jury is still out on the "off the table" bit. We'll see if a second opinion is in the offing.)

Continuing in that flippant vein, I said that neurosurgeons don't understand that fatal doesn't necessarily mean bad to us, mentioning the grim statistics of suicide amongst people with intractable TN. Before I could go on, I got the usual "but but but that's terrible. Why would anyone think that?" So I pulled out the closer: "because the pain is so extraordinary that death is just a treatment option."
That's a great way to get some subjects changed.

So now I get to ponder my options between now and Friday, January 13. There shouldn't be any problem ginning up some pain for the neurosurgeon to study (insert sarcasm note here), because the precursor pain is coming along more, and more often, already. There have already been a couple of troubling warning shots on my right side. I'm trying to persuade myself that it's just psychosomatic: we'll see. If we get to the serious dickering next time there will be three opinions to reconcile, at least.

First, we have the neurosurgeon and his staff, who say that his  MVD procedure is "elegant."  In the language of science, elegance is defined as a minimum of constructs to reach a conclusion or outcome. The procedure itself, the insertion of tiny synthetic sponges to insulate the trigeminal nerve root from the impinging blood vessel, is perhaps elegant. The approach, as I understand it, is anything but. It is a craniotomy, almost the oldest surgical procedure known to humanity. MVD has at least one thing in common with the earliest known craniotomies. They were performed in the Paleolithic era, it is theorised, to let evil spirits out of the heads of the patients. This is a rather apt parallel. Asepsis and precision instruments have improved the success rate, but the neurosurgeon is still drilling a hole whose diameter is somewhere between that of a nickle and a quarter in the skull, driving out the evil...pardon me, performing precision brain surgery, and replacing the skull tissue with a metal lattice-work, then closing. I will perhaps accept "elegant" as an adjective if the approach can be performed with a little more finesse.

Then there's the recovery, Typically, it will start with one night in ICU and two nights on the wards, which at the hospital in question costs about $10,000: I know because it's my business to know, but we'll get to the money-ball later. After that, the patient is home as soon as the patient can ambulate. Oddly enough, as soon as one can ambulate one's arse out of the hospital, there are usually severe restrictions on mobility. You must usually divide your day into little chunks of walking, sitting or lying down, with bits of rehab exercise tossed in here and there. Your head is either totally shaved or partially shaved in some grotesque fashion that would get you the envy of a Goth queen: no hats, no wigs, no nothing. You can't drive, and may even have your licence taken away: for months. You can't work. But in many cases, you won't need to worry about gaining weight, because you may lose your appetite. All this assumes a normal recovery with a normal prognosis.

If MVD is elegant, why does the recovery sound so much like major brain surgery, which it is? Thus the next part of my standard of elegance is learning whether anything mitigates this grim outlook. And no, I don't care if I'll be able to receive radio signals with my head.

All this explains why I'd like to hear another neurosurgeon confirm that phenolic injections are unsafe at any speed. We haven't gone there yet, but that bears looking into. Nor have we heard from the parties who will pay for most or all of this, whose record of support for neuralgia surgery is dismal at best. As I said, medical reimbursement is my occupation, and I won't take one step toward an OR without knowing, in writing, who is paying for what. That's the money-ball game.

It's for damn sure that I can't count on anything I spent my life expecting to rely on in retirement. I keep recalling a form of demonstration from the sixties and seventies called the "Die-in." We're the same people, just older. I think we ought to start planning die-ins in which we actually die. Start small, outside of hospitals. Move to state houses, then Washington. Bring popcorn for the living.