Introduction
Methods
Participants
Demographics | Treatment history | ||||||||||||
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Current drug management | Previous surgical procedures | ||||||||||||
Focus group | Participant | Sex | Age | Year of diagnosis | C | G | T | P | L | Other | GK | MD | PM |
1 | 1 | M | 68 | 2009 |
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| X | X | ||||||
2 | F | 65 | 1998 | O | O | X | |||||||
2 | 3 | F |
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| 1996 | O |
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| |||||||
4 | F | 79 | 1998 | XX | |||||||||
5 | F | 45 | 2004 | O | Pa; I | X | |||||||
6 | F | 77 | 2007 | O | O | XX | |||||||
3 | 7 | F | 70 | 1997 | O | O | XX | ||||||
8 | M | 66 | 2011 | X | X | ||||||||
9* | M | 60 | 2011 |
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|
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10 | F | 70 | 1999 |
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| X | ||||||||
11* | F | 79 | 1988 | O | O | X | XXXXXX | ||||||
4 | 12 | F | 54 | 2011 | X | ||||||||
13 | F | 70 | 2011 | X | X | ||||||||
14 | M | 67 | 2010 | X | X | ||||||||
15 | F | 72 | 2011 | XX | |||||||||
16 | M | 74 | 2007 |
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Design
Participants and recruitment
Data analysis
Results
Theme | Reference | Text, participant, and participant sex (three dots (…) indicate that text has been omitted) |
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Diagnosis and support with TN | 1 | I started about 10 years ago, the first 2 years they were diagnosing me with sinus problems. FG3, female |
2 | I had all my fillings taken out and put back in and teeth taken out… I had Botox… no results at all until they suddenly decided that it was TN… FG2, female | |
3 | I could lie down and go to sleep now; it’s a real problem of fighting the tiredness all day long. FG3, male | |
4 | When you’re in that pain, you know, your life is just wiped out… FG3, female | |
5 | …once you start getting low like that, when the tears start, it’s very hard to come out of it because you’re on a spiral down… FG2, female | |
6 | It’s like....I always feel …I’ve got a demon sitting on my shoulder (laughter)… What have I done?…It’s as if somebody has just hit you in the face for no reason whatsoever and you just want to hit back, you know. FG4, female | |
7 | To me, it’s like someone had a knife and just kept going [stabbing] in to part of my face all the time. … I didn’t have minutes of the day when it wasn’t there. FG2, female | |
8 | … anybody with TN, when it gets to the stage where they[we] can’t talk, we need to see a [consultant] surgeon as quickly as possible… FG1, female | |
Living in fear of TN pain | 9 | I don’t clean my teeth a lot because I’m scared to death of setting it [the pain] off. FG3, male |
10 | I couldn’t lie down, the covers touching [the face] set it off, so I didn’t sleep or I had to sleep in an upright position. FG2, female | |
11 | I’m in pain with it, but I have to keep going, otherwise I’m giving in to it… FG4, female | |
12 | I lost two stones because I couldn’t eat; I used to live on Maltesers and full cream milk…that was my diet. I could put Maltesers in my mouth and slowly let them dissolve… FG1, male | |
13 | …a couple of whiskies …that seemed to make the medication work better… FG3, female | |
14 | I couldn’t even have my tea in front of my children or my husband because I felt I looked like a freak. …you’re in pain and feel like you’re contorted. FG2, female | |
Isolation and social withdrawal | 15 | I just got a personality change and was very sort of serious and quiet, I can’t explain it, all my friends noticed… I was like a zombie. FG3, female |
16 | I wouldn’t do social things, in case it [the pain] started while I was out… FG2, female | |
17 | If I couldn’t get the pills I would commit suicide. FG3, male | |
18 | I would probably have put a bullet through my brains because the pain was so intense. FG2, female | |
19 | Imagine, it’s your daughter’s … birthday party, you can’t speak, and you can’t eat, every time you try to speak [it’s like] someone smacks you straight in the mouth… so you’re not going to go are you? FG1, male | |
20 | I used to pick up my grandchildren and give them a bear hug, but because the pain gradually got worse over the years, I had to stop doing it, and that definitely put a distance between us. FG3, female | |
Medication burden and looking for a cure | 21 | I was relying on those drugs because I believed it was taking some of the pain away and was scared to come off them, in case it was, but still I was in severe pain… too many drugs and still in pain. FG2, female |
22 | I’m taking amitriptyline and pregabalin and I had gabapentin before that and co-codomol but they don’t do anything, it’s [pain] just there all the time… FG3, female | |
23 | Well I actually overdose on gabapentin and I take 1200 mg three times a day plus… when you’re in that pain you’ll take anything. FG3, male | |
24 | I’ve done maximum, you know, …couldn’t bear it anymore, and I have actually I must admit, I have…carbamazepine, actually, and pain killers … I had it so bad one night… FG4, female | |
25 | [the doctor] said to me: “You’re toxic you’ve got far too much carbamazepine in you… I’d also started with eczema, which the dermatologist thought was …a reaction to the carbamazepine. FG2, female | |
26 | Yes, that [Tegretol retard] did inflame my liver; I was really poor with it, so I came off of it quite quickly and then, of course, I was in agony because I was in-between pills… FG3, female | |
27 | When I go onto the drugs it normally gets rid of the pain … [but] the drugs exacerbate all my MS [multiple sclerosis] symptoms… so, If I’m on a preventive dose I don’t go out of the house, if I’m on the medication, I’m stuck there. FG4, female | |
28 | … I stopped taking them [the tablets] like that, I suffered for it, but… I thought: “I’m sick of taking tablets…” Taking that many tablets you forget whether you’ve taken them or not. So I came straight off them… FG1, male | |
29 | I gave up doing gas work, I couldn’t guarantee that I could concentrate on it enough to do it… I chopped [off] the ends of three fingers, I wasn’t concentrating … I was thinking about the pain instead of what I was doing… FG3, male | |
30 | I had people accusing me of being a “druggie”…work colleagues saying: “there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just a druggie”, you’re on drugs… FG2, female | |
31 | I just couldn’t keep up, my reactions had slowed down… it would feel as if I were being pushed out, so I just gave my notice. FG1, female | |
32 | I did run into the back of three cars while driving… I shouldn’t have been driving but I was reluctant to give up work and work involved travel. FG2, female | |
33 | I couldn’t calculate, I lost my mental arithmetic, it disappeared I just could not think…So yeah it did affect me…FG3, female | |
34 | Simple everyday things like that I should have known had just gone and it didn’t matter how I tried I just couldn’t bring them back. FG2, female | |
35 | I have a feeling of swaying all the time, as if I was going to sort of fall over in slow motion… FG3, female | |
36 | I’m sort of not connecting between my brain and what I’m doing, and sometimes I can write and think…no problem, other times I can’t… FG1, female | |
37 | …surgery, it was never mentioned for me when it [the pain] was bad…when I was kind of drug-controlled. FG2, female | |
38 | I just wanted to cut down on the medication… it [surgery] did that… It got rid of the pain… it’s just uncomfortable now. I can live with uncomfortable. FG2, female | |
39 | …once I had this done, it was wonderful, all the pain had gone I was back to normal, it’s really really nice… when you can’t, talk, eat, socialize, it takes a lot way from you.. FG1, male |