Before I had my radio frequency ablation sphenopalatine ganglion block expealidocious, I looked everywhere for information on it and could not find it. None. Nada. Okay, not none, but I couldn't find anything from real people. I could find advertisements from pain clinics, and a few short articles, some study abstracts, and I dug deep and found a fantastic description complete with cadaver photos from The Cleveland Clinic. But I did not find any people who said, "This is what happens, and this is how I felt when it happened, and here is my outcome."
So I'm trying to document it in hopes someone else might stumble upon this someday and find it helpful.
So after the procedure I felt pretty good the rest of the day. My jaw was sore, and cheek was swollen, but overall I felt pretty good. Towards the end of the day my headache came back about a level 5 or 6. We were having a windstorm, so I wasn't surprised. I was also told that I wouldn't feel relief right away; that it would take a few days.
Saturday wasn't too bad, but I wasn't sure if it was the procedure or just a relatively good day as the weather was pretty nice. However as the day went on, the head ramped up and it was bilateral, so no love.
Sunday was amazing, but it was due to running. I ran a half marathon with my lovely running group. I wish I could bottle running. I wouldn't have to go through all of this! During my run I felt amazing, all the way up until the last half hour or so, but the weather really changed about that time. The rest of the day got a lot worse.
So here we are Monday. My bruising on my face is down and the swelling is almost gone. I do have a black eye, which is sort of amusing. It's not horrible, but my husband keeps joking that there is "more where that came from!" If you knew my husband, you'd get why that's funny. He is afraid of spiders and is a big teddy bear of a guy.
No pain relief, though. I did do a TON of reading on other ablations last night and it sounds like the nerves take from 6 days to sometimes up to weeks to completely stop transmitting pain signals, so I am honestly not concerned.
I did read a lot of horror stories of more pain from other ablations (not SPG, back or neck related). So far I wouldn't say more pain. Maybe more tinnitus. I'm not 100% positive, but tonight my tinnitus is really loud! Not sure if it's causation or correlation.
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