Trigeminal Neuralgia

Well, I changed my mind and decided to see a doctor. I've been diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia, and after taking a look at the symptoms this exactly matches how I feel. My teeth are so sensitive that even one drop of warm tea will explode with agony across my face. Rather than the short attacks common to many sufferers, my pain seems to last for longer periods, even hours. It ebbs and flows like a ghost, liquid pain, none to mild to severe and away.

The diagnosis is devastating, I'm coming to terms with it, but it gives me some useful clues. I don't need to worry about muscle relaxation, or tooth problems, or spasms from vocal muscles or saliva glands. The condition can vary per person and may go away, the excellent doctor said it would pass. It can even vanish completely, although on average it seems it gets worse over time. In retrospect, this is the pain (though far milder) I felt in November and December when first experiencing what I thought were tooth problems. It reappeared again last month, but only since Tuesday evening was the pain overwhelming.

I have been prescribed some pain relief medication. I have a few treatment ideas myself. For years I've been taking daily choline, 100mg. I've also recently started to take some lithium orotate after a positive study concerning memory improvement and the attenuation of neurological deterioration. Both supplements are useful as they assist myelin, this small dose of choline may have delayed the disease. More choline and more lithium is one treatment which may help with myelin healing (I expect this takes many months, nerves heal very slowly), if this works at all. These supplements are, at least, relatively harmless - this should always be the first question with an experimental supplement. If my teeth are the only point of sensitivity, perhaps a shield over them will stop it - does such a thing exist? I can drink with straws, now knowing that trying to 'train' my nerves to accept normal eating is probably futile - although it seems that after the initial agony, it does become possible to eat, so perhaps there are some elements of training.

I expect this will obsess me for a few days but now, at this moment, there is no pain and I've felt only dull pain since 2pm, so perhaps the medication is working.

Onwards.

War and Nuclear Love, and the Agony

Did some work on a song yesterday called 'War and Nuclear Love'. It's amazing that in a song almost any chord will do, so I'm trying to push out more boats here and let loose more.

The day, alas, was been dominated by my agonising jaw pain, spasms of some sort. Almost any food, even drinks slightly warm, slightly cold, that touch the senstive teeth at the far right side of my mouth starts a cascade of agony like a flow of some painful liquid. The pain can also grow from nothing without cause, jangling my front teeth, then running along right gums up and down, extending to ear, down to my Adam's apple; ebbing and flowing in intensity. Last night, the pain swelled and grew from about 8pm to 10pm and was the most agonising pain I've ever experienced. I capitulated and took some ibuprofen, which attenuated it completely for sleeping (such relief, despite the shivering terror of it returning).

I'm unsure of the cause. This started on Tuesday night. I'd been reading audiobooks for many hours for about two weeks, so perhaps there are some effects there (unusually high levels of vocal muscle use, salivation changes). I doubt this. Perhaps more likely is the long running teeth problems, which led me to avoid using the right side of my mouth. Now those teeth are largely fine, and have been ground a little to change my bite. This change perhaps, and aiming to once again chew with the right side more, I suspect is messing around with the jaw alignment. I can't be sure though. The pain is so intense, and triggered by a nerve reception that it may be a nerve problem. If it were only muscular, why is it triggered, as it certainly is, by the sensitive tooth?

Anyway, I've decided to avoid doctors for now while I experiment with jaw exercises and strategies. The pain is at times intolerable to the extent of wanting to kill myself to avoid it (that bad), but perhaps this is a release of months of tension, or something along the lines of an adjustment to my life-long jaw alignment which will normalise in a few days. Perhaps there is hope.

Agony and Wars

A good day at the Good Vibrations event yesterday but the last couple of days and nights have been dominated by agonising jaw and gum pain, caused by muscle spasms and cramps. What I'd considered tooth sensitivity for the last few months was unusually painful because of this. In such attacks my jaw and gums flow with awful spasm pain which can endure for hours without respite. The tension seems to spread from or to my throat too, so perhaps it is related to the (highly unusual) many hours of speaking I've recently been doing during audiobook recording. The pain feels like being held hostage by a gaggle of spectral ant-torturers, as the pain glides and flows like water. Pushed by massage from one area to flow to another in a never-ending spiral.

A drink of alcohol causes a similar painful spasm, normally just one that tends to last a few seconds. Now, I find that eating or drinking anything seems to trigger this, in particular an over-reaction by the sensitive tooth, and that it can last hours.

The upside is that this finally resolves the mystery of months of mouth pain, and with hope this is the last gasp of these symptoms, the tangible effects of months of worry (worry mostly about this actual problem) evaporating. At least I know the very painful, but not damaging, cause.

Today and yesterday this is dominating every act. I've decided to rest today. The audiobooks are now complete. I think next I'll work a little on music, the album/EP with the (appropriate) war theme. It's difficult to create something that can even approach the enormity of this subject. The songs I'm working on seem trite and light somehow, but I must work and do my best, not over-think to the extent of a project dragging on for too long. Much of The Beatles output was trite and light, short, unstructured.

Burning Circus Audiobook Complete

Completed The Burning Circus audiobook today. Unsure what to do next. I've been sketching works for the long paused album on war, which seems chillingly appropriate.

Blake and Burning Circus Audiobooks

Two days of work on the Songs of Innocence And of Experience, and The Burning Circus audiobooks. Slight work yesterday, designing the cover art, and preparing the track names, filenames. With over 40 tracks per book, the task of typing these filenames 4 times (in different places) is quite time consuming.

Today, recorded all of the Blake poems, and processed these too, so the book is now complete. I'll work on The Burning Circus tomorrow. I've also decided to pay for a Goodreads giveaway for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death, a first stab at some promotion for this book, which I still love and rate, yet remains largely unknown to the world.

I'll hold off submission and publication of the audiobooks for a few weeks. I'm unsure if this makes any difference, but with Steam for example, releasing lots of new things at once floods potential customers, when one new release every month tends to have more effect. This will conclude my audiobook work for now. My next writing task will be finishing (well, writing...) my book on oil painting mastery.

My teeth and mouth still ache mildly and constantly, as has been the case since December. This, and the lack of an NHS dentist, constitute the primary bane of my life at the moment.

How To Audiobook Complete

Completed the audiobook for How To Organise Your Computer Files in record time. The text boxes and footnotes presented a problem for audio, so I changed the timbre of the voice for those, making it somewhat dry and dusty like the voice of HAL in the '2001: A Space Odyssey' film. For footnotes, I added a bell sound at the appropriate time, and read the notes at the chapter end, as in the book.

I had to change the cover, as the lower part needs to be blank for overlays.

The book is less than 4 years old, but some parts are already ripe for a new edition. Back then, few USB drives could outperform a hard drive's writing speed, but now this is common. Perhaps the parts on optical media was anachronistic even in 2022, but the comments are still valid; they are, in the long term, probably more archival than solid state drives. I'll wait a week or two before doing more on this. It would be better to release these audiobooks at intervals instead of all in one lump. Much of the material will be valid and useful no matter what the year.

The fast work on this has given me confidence that I can work at a similar rate for the Blake poems, so I've decided to record The Burning Circus too, notably leaving only Deep Dark Light unread. The strange specialist books, like the Nantwich Museum Poems (which isn't my work anyway, and was only made as a limited edition accompaniment to my exhibition), the Salome book, the Marius Fate book, and the Taskforce manual aren't high priorities to revisit.

Deep Dark Light would be quite a lot of work, it has a lot of poems, and the long story of almost novella length, and it's yet to sell a copy, so for the moment I'll hold off on that, even though I think it's a good work of literature.

How To Audiobook

I've decided to charge into more audiobooks and sheet music transcription, spending the next two weeks to see how much I can manage of those four projects, the work of which is an ultimate goal anyway. Today, a first day of work on the How To Organise Your Computer Files audiobook. It presents a few challenges, as the book has a few text boxes, so I've developed a sound effect to indicate when the spoken text is read from a text box. Some of the text itself necessarily changes a little so that folder trees, for example, are described.

First job was creating those sound effects, then adapting the cover:

About 50% of the text is now read in its first draft, far faster than the much larger TMBWOD. My target is to finish it all by the end of Tuesday, anything less would be a bonus. Onwards we charge.

TMBWOD Complete, Prometheus v3.84

Completed the final small edits and proofing to The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death today, then submitted for approval.

Then updated Prometheus a notch. One tiny improvement was the track lights. Until now the top (green) light is lit when all tracks are active (as most songs will be when on the final render) and dark green when some are not, but for audiobooks, I tend to only want one o two active, just those for the current chapter, so it's useful to be sure that no others are; so a new black icon is now there when all tracks are off.

My 'Hello Earth' painting has taken off on BlueSky, a similar level to the Philosopher painting. Strange how this happens, but it is a welcome and pleasant feeling of appreciation. It's confirmed that the 12 paintings with Galleria Balmain will remain there exclusively until September or so.

I could start on new creative material, or work on more audiobooks or sheet music transcription. Next possible books, How To Organise Your Computer Files or William Blake one. Next possible albums to transcribe, Burn Of God or Remembrance Service. It's an ultimate aim to do all of that, but I'm feeling I'm not creating enough. I need to make new art.