Posted by harley on August 29, 1998 at 13:47:12:
In Reply to: Pain killing injections from John Hopkins posted by Nancy on August 28, 1998 at 16:44:47:
i'm not sure about the relationship between the two, but this is what happened to me. when i first started getting clusters, about 5 years ago, i went to my gp. he diagnosed them as tri. gem. and started me on tegretal. the pain got worse, we doubled the dose. still nothing, i tripled it. by now i was going mad, and getting depressed. finally he refered me to a neuro.. he knew right off it was clusters, and said the med. would never have helped. he also said that with clusters the pain can move in an upward direction, not so with tri. gem. so while the two are similar, the pain of clusters can move to areas not associated with the trigeminal nerve. (i think) but if these injections work i'll get one.