I have trigeminal neuralgia. Most people have never heard of it, and that’s ok because I’m a nurse and I never heard of it until I got diagnosed with it a few years ago. Here’s the condensed version: it causes excruciatingly painful spasms of the trigeminal nerve, which is the main facial nerve. It feels like being stabbed in the face with a bolt of lightning every minute or two for several days.  Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, most of the time I’m able to control the pain with rest, medication, or large amounts of vodka. Last night was a different story.  At about 11pm, I decided to go to an ER that will remain nameless for the purposes of this story.

Wait; let me back up for a minute. I forgot to mention that when the spasm hits, my eyes squeeze shut, my face contracts, and I yell “Arggggggh!” This may be why, after 10 minutes in the ER waiting area, everyone else had strategically placed themselves close to the nearest exit. I think they were afraid. As if I was the scariest person there. Not by a long shot. There was a lady on crystal meth, a teenage boy carrying on a conversation with an invisible person, an 80ish year old man with his pajamas on (the pants had a peep hole), and a very large lady lying on the floor screaming something or other about her eyes.

About twenty minutes later, I was lying on the cot in a cubicle when I realized that the aforementioned screaming lady was in the cubicle next to me. I could hear everything.  As it turned out, her visit to the ER was due to a rather serious condition known as ‘I Got Shampoo In My Eyes.’  ”It’s burning, it’s burning! Good Lawd help me it’s burning so bad!” she screamed over and over. The doctor asked her if she considered rinsing it out before she made the trip to the ER. The world is full of these kinds of people, I’m afraid. Some of them work with you. Some of them are even in your own household.  Beware, my friends.

Finally I got to see the doctor. He came in and said, “What brings you here tonight?” I told him, he looked at me for about thirty seconds without speaking and said, “I’ll be right back.” Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I suspected he had no idea what I was talking about and had to go look it up in a medical dictionary. And I wasn’t disappointed when he re-entered and asked me if I had plans to commit suicide any time soon.

I forgot to mention that trigeminal neuralgia is often referred to in the medical texts as “the suicide disease” because of the very limited treatment options and the extreme lengths to which some people will go to rid themselves of the pain once and for all. Oh great, now I’m on suicide watch, I thought.  Apparently, this guy didn’t realize that I love me some me and have no plans whatsoever to damage myself in any way. I told him that it’s much more likely that I would go postal and kill someone else rather than kill myself. And that the screaming lady in the next cubicle was at the top of my list.

He came clean and admitted that he had no idea what to do to help me. “Morphine, sleep, and make that lady shut up,” I told him, which is exactly what he tried to do.  I vaguely remember several rather interesting things that occurred in my morphine haze.  One, the picture on the wall appeared to be winking at me. Two, some brave soul attempted to rinse the shampoo out of The Screamer’s eyes at the eyewash station and almost drowned in the ensuing drama that occurred.  And three, morphine makes me itch. At some point I thought it would be funny to yell out over and over again, “It’s itching, it’s itching! Good Lawd help me it’s itching so bad!” Everybody in the ER was laughing at me, or maybe with me, except for The Screamer.

By 3am I was feeling sufficiently well enough to go back home, but not without an invitation from the doctor and every nurse in the ER to return at any time for entertainment purposes.  Looking back, this was definitely the best ER trip I have ever had.

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