Of all
places in body that can hurt, face might seem strangest. But for some people, that's exactly where agony occurs, and cause is a nerve gone haywire.How peripheral nerves involve themselves in pain is sometimes confusing. Here's a handy way to think of two basic patterns:
#1: The nerve is messenger. If you have a dental abscess, a facial sunburn or a sinus infection, you can count on pain being present. Where does it come from? Special nerve endings detect tissue-injury and generate electrical impulses. The peripheral nerves carry these impulses into brain. The peripheral nerves didn't CAUSE pain, they're just carrying bad news. (Don't shoot messenger!)
#2: The nerve itself is mischief-maker. In some cases nerve generates abnormal impulses on its own. The nerve is still capable of carrying normal impulses, like those informing brain that skin of face is warm or cold—-or that you cut yourself shaving—-but generates signals of its own as well that brain can only interpret as painful.
When peripheral nerves generate bolts of pain in forehead, eye, cheek or jaw, it's called trigeminal neuralgia. This technical term can be broken into its parts, starting at end and working forward. "Algia" means pain. A "neur-algia" means nerve-pain. Finally, "trigeminal" is name of nerve involved. So "trigeminal neuralgia" means pain caused by trigeminal nerve. We have two trigeminal nerves, one for each side of face. They are among largest nerves in our heads.
An older term for trigeminal neuralgia was "tic douloureux." This bears explaining. A "tic" is a sudden, brief movement. "Douloureux" is French word for "painful." So a "tic douloureux" means that a sudden, brief movement and a pain occur together. However, this terminology was largely abandoned because it implies that movement is an essential feature. It isn't. When movement is present, it's just as a reaction to pain.
So what are usual features of trigeminal neuralgia? First of all, it almost always occurs on just one side of face. If one of our trigeminal nerves gets involved in this unfortunate condition, it's rare indeed that second trigeminal nerve would be so unlucky to get involved, too. Or another way of looking at it is this: if pain switches sides or crosses midline, then it's probably not trigeminal neuralgia.
