Facial Numbness

Another health problem to add to my "I feel like crap" list: facial numbness

Since Monday night, I've been experiencing numbness on my forehead, mostly around the hair line. Yesterday at work, the numbness went from my hairline across my whole forehead and down the sides of my head around my ears. My ears felt normal, but it even seemed to extend into the area below and behind my ears. My tongue felt vaguely numb. The forehead numbness has persisted since then. It's mild numbness. I can still feel sharp and cold, etc. but it kind of feels like when you get freezing at the densist and the freezing starts to come out. My skin feels fleshy and thick to my fingers, since my fingers can feel but my skin doesn't feel as sensitive. Very surreal and very troubling.

The numbness hasn't gotten worse, and it isn't one-sided. I don't have any other complaints, other than feeling vaguely spaced-out and having bad headaches the past few days. So I know it isn't a stroke. It seems content to sit there and be numb. It's obviously some numbness in one of the branches of the trigeminal nerve, that enervates the face, but why?

I'm seeing my GP on Friday to get refills of my nasal spray and birth control pill. Then on Tuesday I see my neurologist for my regular 4-month visit. I think he'll be interested and likely perplexed by the new symptoms. The balance/unsteadiness thing comes and goes, but now...a numb face. Very scary. He will probably send me for another MRI, but the last was only 9 months ago. Can things change so quick?

Makes one think of MS and all those scary neuro diseases, which would be a sick coincidence after 9 years of stand-alone headaches and neurology visits. A few years ago, in 1998 I had a whole series of weird neurological complaints. The headaches had been around a couple of years, then I had some awful bladder problems (urgency, severe frequency) which had no urological basis (after about 400 tests), and then various problems like muscle weakness, pins and needles in my hands and feet, numbness in my lips, etc. They did every imaginable test at the time but found no problem. They chalked it up to stress and anxiety over the headaches and bladder problems (which was later differentially diagnosed as interstitial cystitis, a condition that destroys the bladder wall). Eventually the neuro complaints went away and the bladder condition was treated with some experimental drugs that re-built my bladder walls.

So I'm not as terrified as I was last time these things happened, but still it's troubling.

But what's worse is that I don't want to be self-absorbed right now. My poor dear David has just been diagnosed with shingles! Shingles is the herpes zoster virus, an adult version of chickenpox. The virus sits dormant in your nerve cells after having chickenpox as a child, only to re-emerge as painful blisters as an adult. David had 2 previous episodes over the last few years, so this is his 3rd bout. He has swollen, painful blisters on his forehead that cause nerve pain in his face and ear and the anti-viral meds are making him tired. His head is aching and he gets shooting nerve pain that must be brutal. Since the immune system fights the virus, he also feels achey and flu-like.

So he needs some love and support right now, not a girlfriend with a numb head. Poor David. He gives so much and takes so little, so I feel rotten even mentioning my numb face when his forehead is paining and his head is aching. And his blisters look like they want to burst and ooze.

We make a fine pair.

Anyway, hopefully his blisters will begin to heal up since he caught it early this time, and he won't be down for weeks, as can happen to some. And I hope my neurologist says my numbness is nothing. Instead, I'm afraid he'll look worried and sign me up for several dozen tests. Then again, when stuff like this happens, you just want to know what's wrong.

I've read that numbness and such can accompany migraine, but who knows/ Let's hope that's all it is.