Why am I always saying sorry for having additional medical needs? I even apologised to the HR department at my work for my disabilities.

Explaining TN to someone who doesn’t live with it is near impossible, even a doctor, a pain specialist, or a neurologist. You can tell someone, ‘this is the worst pain you could ever imagine’ and the worst pain that person…

I know people who work on reduced hours, I know people who have taken career breaks, I know people on sick leave and I know people who have given up work altogether.

Choosing to be in pain isn’t an easy choice. It’s the impossible choice, made only slightly easier for me by the fact that the medication didn’t ever completely take the pain away for me.

I am 30 years old, I’ve had TN for over 6 years, I volunteer for the TNA UK and I’ve never actually met anyone face to face who also lives with trigeminal neuralgia.

October 7th 2021 is Trigeminal Neuralgia Awareness Day 2021; the world is lighting up in teal and I have amassed 50 thousand readers.

One day, I will wake up again and the pain will hit me literally square in the face and I am right back to where I started.

If you are in a trigeminal neuralgia flare up, or attack, that is not managed by your medication at home and you feel like you cannot cope, you might find yourself considering attending A&E.

It’s challenging enough to bring a newborn baby home from the hospital, especially when it’s your first child. Throw into the mix that my little girl was born prematurely, that we were supposed to move house the week she was…

Sometimes on a high pain week, I don’t want to do a lot of chewing, so it’s very tempting to stick to soups and yoghurt, but that isn’t very exciting.