Occipital Neuralgia Online Support Group

have you contacted any of the doctors they recommended to you?

i havent contacted any yet but i am going to. i still have to get a definate diagnoses the neuralogist i had said it was ON, but shouldnt they do some type of test? he didnt i went and seen him the first time and within 5 mins. he said occipital. how do they know for sure without tests?

For me, when doc presses directly on the specific nerve, he easily sees how much pain I'm in. My occipital nerve is extremely irritated, causing the excruciating pain. I have arthritis and a bone spur in my neck which I am told is the reason.

I'm also thinking about your ear pain, I figure you have seen and ENT (ear-nose-throat doc). I went to an ENT first as I suspected my sinuses were the cause of my headaches and ear pounding. He did xrays and hearing test, and that ruled out sinus issues.

From everything I read here, there can be many reasons for ON. I doubt all of the reasons are candidates for surgery. I know Chloe and others here have GOOD success with surgery. But, remember, they've been in pain a long time, some for years, and it's taken a lot to get them to the point of surgery.

You're gonna have to keep looking till you find a doctor that your comfortable with, and probably a good drive from where you are (I recall you're in southeast Ohio?). I know that area just does NOT have much in medical specialty care.

Annie

occipital neuralgia IS NOT a disease that you cure like let's say a cough because occipital neuralgia is NOT A DISEASE....

occipital neuralgia is a condition.... there are two types of occipital neuralgia

1. primary occipital neuralgia: which is what chloe had, when the occipital nerve is pressed constantly by a vein or bone or muscle (you need an operation for this)

2. secondary occipital neuralgia: is just a symptom from the occipital nerve becoming tense due to muscle tension or the spine in the neck being out of alignment or some other condition like low blood sugar or anything that can possibly affect the nerves etc. (in those cases you cure it by curing the other problem you have)

one thing Is specify your symptoms:

because ear pain can happen because of an enormous number of reasons, from simple ear infection, to tempomandibular disorder, to muscle tension around the ear, from all sorts of things.

usually occipital neuralgia can be diagnosed by injecting the occipital nerve with a solution, if the pain goes away then for sure is occipital neuralgia.... many times the nerve doesn't work and still idiotic doctors diagnose people with occipital neuralgia when they probably have some other thing wrong causing the pain.

MANY CONDITIONS MIMIC OCCIPITAL NEURALGIA.... so be careful!

if the doctor saw you and within the first 5 minutes diagnosed you with ON, then I would suggest looking for a second opinion......

have you had an mri of your ear area?

do you have any throbbing flashing electric type pain coming from the back of your head all the way to the forehead?

HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR POSTURE?

do you have any muscle pain anywhere?

describe your headaches? are they tension? migraine like? or your pain is just entirely ear pain?

these are things that you need to describe here so at least some folks who know quite a lot about ON can at least more or less help you.

my daughter was diagnosed with ON by a doctor because she told him she was getting a lot of tension headaches and neck pain and the moron touched my daughter's side of the head, where the nerve supposedly passes by and since she felt sensible on the area he determined it was ON (IT COMES UP IT WAS TRIGGER POINTS ON THE TEMPORALIS MUSCLE) and let's not even mention how he ignored the fact that my daughter was complaining from tension headaches and back pain... not throbbing nerve pain traveling through her head)

in google you can find a big number of books and info regarding ON

so read as much as you can and compare it to your symptoms.

Post edited by: xutka, at: 03/11/2011 12:35 AM

how would you cure ON in that case? (simply change your mattress)

I think pretty much everybody will experience some secondary occipital neuralgia at some point in their lives!

I have said before my niece had it for one year but she was fit and young. It wasn't level 10 very often. Over the xmas break she said it just disappeared.

If in your scenario xutka that a mattress caused the problem, by the time you found out what it was and how to resolve your pain issue changing the mattress may not fix it.

yes i have had ct of ear and brain mri neck and ct sinus,they said muscle spasms in my neck was causing oc this i thought that was funny because i did not feel pain in neck but today i was doing neck stretches and noticed my ear that usually wouldnt pop poped like crazy from stretching sternomastoid muscle in side of neck! maybe they were right. and i do also sometimes feel like a line across the bottom of earlobe thats all i can call it it feels like a nerve laying over it but i know that cant be. i reasearched that symptom and it did come back as oc