The healing...
My Sister's Story
My Sister's Pain
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| By Judy Manning It was October 2007 at our annual Girls Weekend, my three sisters, our mom and I were sitting at dinner. Robyn, the youngest was telling us about these weird sensations of numbness she was having in her face. She wasn't worried about the numbness (she would take no feeling over the excruciating pain she had been forced to live with over the last two years) But I was. I wanted her to be pain free and get back to a normal life after being diagnosed with the most painful affliction known to man, Trigeminal Neuralgia but something just didn't sound right. She described the numbness as moving up the side of her face and then into her eye. As a registered nurse I took "moving numbness" as an ominous sign that something wasn't right. After all she didn't have this after her first gamma knife surgery. In the days and weeks to follow two new sensations joined the numbness - constant severe pain and intermittent lightning bolt jolts. She was not given a name to this new condition by her doctor. He only said that what happened to her after her second gamma knife procedure was his worst nightmare (his worst nightmare???) and told her she would have to go to a pain clinic to manage this new permanent condition because there was nothing more they could do for her. I began to research her symptoms over the internet and after many hours I came upon this condition known as Anesthesia Dolorosa or "painful numbness". As I described this condition to my sister over the phone, I could hear her sobbing "I thought I was going crazy" she said. Although there was no cure offered for AD, she felt better knowing that she was not suffering alone and that she now had a name for her condition. I found a support group near her home through the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association and learned about a conference they were having in New York in April 2008 and decided we needed to go. As we hurried into the lobby of the conference and grabbed a quick cup of coffee, a doctor approached my sister. He asked her if she was suffering from Trigeminal Neuralgia and when she nodded "yes", he explained that he was an Upper Cervical Chiropractor, and unlike traditional chiropractors who makes adjustments by popping and cracking he did only ONE highly specialized procedure known as " upper cervical adjustment". He explained quickly that the C1 and C2 cervical vertebrae at the top of the spine can become misaligned due to an accident or injury and that once it is aligned properly the body begins to heal itself. He gave us two thin books to read about the subject and we hurried into the conference where we received lots of information on different surgical options for which she might be a candidate. Later that night in the hotel we briefly looked over the information we gathered then went to bed. At 3 AM I woke up (a side effect from working the night shift at the hospital). I couldn't turn on the light or TV as my sister was sleeping and I was not going to risk interrupting this brief relief from her pain. I quietly sifted through the paperwork we got from the conference and came upon one of the books that chiropractor had given us. Using the light from my cell phone, I began to read a story about a man who suffered from Trigeminal Neuralgia for 12 years. His story was so compelling and his healing so miraculous that I began to pray for my sister that this could be the answer for her too. After extensively researching Upper Cervical I convinced my sister to try it. The Upper Cervical doctor did a scan of her spine and took two x-rays to determine her degree of misalignment, or subluxation as they call it. Because she traveled so far he did the first few adjustments at that visit. Three days later my sister was completely free of her lightning bolt pains and her constant pain, caused by the surgery, went from a 10+++ to about a 4 she said. After continued adjustments she began to get some feeling back in her face and feels like she has her life back. I don't know if this would work for everyone, I just know that we were praying for a miracle for my sister and actually got one. |
