Terry’s Gamma Knife Procedure Oct. 2022
Wow, who would’ve known that Terry would be so sick starting September 1, 2022?
In early September I was on vacation celebrating my husband’s birthday in Nashville, Tennessee. We were driving to Lexington Kentucky to see his extended family and meet his newest granddaughter. Allen noticed a bump on my face but didn’t think anything about it before we went to dinner.
The next morning, I knew in Allen‘s eyes something was terribly wrong with my face. He looked at me and said you have shingles. I was no stranger to shingles, as I had them almost 4 years ago to the day in September, 2018. That time it was on my back, and I had no feeling, and it was a mild case of shingles. But oh, now I had terrible shingles on the left-hand side from my forehead down to my eyelid and into my hairline. It was extremely painful for 3 1/2 weeks. I looked like a monster the first two weeks with big sores. The worst was my eyelid – it felt like it had a rock on it.
Just when I was feeling better, I did Felix on the left side to Jim and all nerve pain. It was the worst pain I ever had because it was going through the post shingles from my forehead, around the eye, down my nose, into my cheek. I am a tough girl and normally handle my pain but this time I had to have somebody hold my hand and rub it why I was going through this excruciating episode that lasted 5 to 6 minutes or more each time. This lasted three weeks until they figured out the right medication to give me. I can tell you narcotics do not take care of neuropathic pain. Good news is there are neuropathic pain medicine out there that treats this.
Late October I was fortunate enough to meet with my neurosurgeon who decided gamma knife radiosurgery would be best for me. He was right after I had the procedure, I felt so much better even though I had mild pain for about three weeks after surgery.
Moral to the story, anybody with an auto immune disease please talk to your physician to see when you should have your shingles shot.
Give Tamara and Terry a shout out about these pictures in this story. We would love to hear from you.
Tamara and Terry
Twins Coast To Coast
Conclusions: Gamma knife radiosurgery is the most minimally invasive surgical technique for multiple sclerosis-related trigeminal neuralgia and has low morbidity. For this reason, gamma knife radiosurgery proved to be a satisfactory management strategy for multiple sclerosis-related trigeminal neuralgia
Tamara and Terry Medical Rough Patches
This was the beginning of the shingles (Day five.)
On my way to the gamma knife treatment.
Nurse getting everything ready for the procedure.
Getting ready to go into the MRI machine to receive radiation
Dr. Pollard Radiation (Oncologist) and Dr. McCracken (Neurosurgeon) who both treated me for the trigeminal nerve procedure.
Finished with the procedure – after 41 minutes in the CT machine receiving radiation to the trigeminal nerve.
All done and pictured with the nurses and Dr. Pollard. He took the helmet off after the procedure.
