Question: Hi Dr. Honey! You have been so helpful and reassuring to me in tha past! I recently asked another doctor in an online forum my question, and he indicated something about trigeminal neuralgia that made me a bit concerned, so I thought that maybe you could give me some reassurance:

I’m attaching an image of my CT scan report, as I had visited my doctor for left sided pain in my ear and upper teeth region. He gave meantibiotics and told me to use flonase. Can you please take a look and tell me if there’s anything to be concerned about...from what I can see, there doesn’t appear to be. When the other doctor answered he indicated that everything looked fine and he thought perhaps I should consider it being trigeminal neuralgia. I have had pain primarily just in my upper left teeth for quite a few months now and the dentist has done xrays and found nothing wrong. I also feel some milder pains and pressure in my left ear and have some soreness in my left neck, probably due to posture. The pain which I feel in my upper left teeth is intermittent and dull and throbbing and is relieved by ibuprofen.. I was actually thinking that if it wasn’t sinus related perhaps it could be TMJ disorder. Well, I mistakenly googled trigeminal neuralgia after the other doctor mentioned it and saw it can be caused by tumors, multiple sclerosis, etc. Do you think it could be trigeminal neuralgia and should I be worried about those causes? I had an MS scare fifteen years ago after having a c-section and experiencing parasthesias, and went to a neurologist who ran tests and MRIs. No specific lesions were found and he couldn’t definitely diagnose MS. I do have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, however, and nothing suggestive of MS has arisen over the past fifteen years. I just got worried when I googled trigeminal neuralgia and the mention of tumors and multiple sclerosis came up!

Thank you so much for your response Dr. Honey!! I plan on making an appt to visit my ENT. Just one more crazy question...again, I was a little worried when I saw a reference on the internet that trigeminal neuralgia can be caused by tumors (I suffer from health anxiety).... of course, we don’t even know if it’s trigeminal neuralgia or just sinus related, as you suspect....but theoretically, if there was a tumor would it probably have been seen on the CT scan of the maxillofacial structures, which I just had?