u/VickyAlberts

I’ve been doing EMDR for around 6mths now. My therapist asks me to remember a traumatic experience and then she does some sort of activity with me to make me use my brain, like an A-Z of animals or some tongue twisters. She stops during this and asks me how the memory feels to me now. I usually tell her I don’t feel anything about it now and she thinks that’s good because It’s not as upsetting to me. But it’s not that at all. I don’t feel anything because I’m totally focused on the other activity and I’m not thinking about the memory anymore.

Is this distraction meant to help? When the memory comes back to me later it’s just as bad as ever. I don’t understand how I’m meant to focus on the memory but focus on something else at the same time. My brain just can’t do that.

After wearing a 34A for years, I used the calculator and it said I need a 30 C/D. I thought there was no way that would fit but I was wrong! I bought the Millie bra from bravissimo because I liked that the stretch lace cups can help fit asymmetric boobs. They don’t do any smaller than D cup so I ordered a 30D. The problem is it fits my larger breast really well but is slightly loose on my smaller side.

However, on the smaller side I have an implanted cardiac loop recorder, and strangely this bra seems to reduce the pain/discomfort from it. I think it’s because the underwire seems to separate and support my breasts better. All my other bras are non-wired and tend to squash my boobs.

I’m due to have surgery to reduce the larger breast at some point though, so afterwards the bra may be too big on both sides. I was going to return it because it’s not a cheap bra but I really like how it fits and the fact that it seems to help with the pain. Could anyone help me decide what to do?

I’ve had TN for 12yrs but oxcarbazepine took the pain away completely for years until I had to stop it. I’ve had long periods of remission but this hellish disease always returned eventually. It’s been a nightmare for over a year now. I’m on gabapentin and Baclofen but it doesn’t work as well as oxcarbazepine.

The doctor recently asked me what level of improvement I’ve had and I said maybe 60%. He seemed pleased and said that’s as much as we could hope for with any type of pain relief. Really?! Is being unable to speak or eat and climbing the walls in pain for 40% of the time really acceptable? He then started gaslighting me saying that a lot of pain can come from anxiety and that he knows I’ve had issues with my mental health. I mean, this disease has destroyed my life so yeah. I’ve lost my career, my partner, my hobbies, social life, friends. Of course that has affected my mental health!

I asked him if he could at least prescribe some topical local anaesthetic. I’ve found that numbing that side of my face helps reduce triggers (like light touch or the wind blowing on my face) but he said ‘Oh that doesn’t work with TN because it’s a deep pain not just on the skin’. It was so frustrating. I already use it all the time because I know it DOES help. I just thought he could prescribe a stronger one than the OTC types.

This is the NHS of course. I shouldn’t have got my hopes up. They haven’t got a clue if they think anyone could tolerate this level of pain 40% of the time forever.

I noticed a pre-op assessment questionnaire on the MyCare website recently. I didn’t get any notification about it and was only looking at the website because I got a notification about a different appointment. Does anyone know if this means the surgery is coming up soon? Or is that just the first stage in another long-winded process? It’s the Ulster Hospital.

I’ve been waiting since 2018 for this surgery and there are things I’d need to do to prepare, things to buy etc. So any idea of the timescale would be helpful. To make matters worse, I haven’t been able to have a holiday since 2018 because they kept telling me the surgery would be ‘in the next few months’ but recently I gave up on that and we’ve booked a holiday for September, which might now have to be cancelled if the surgery really is coming up soon.

I get seasonal hives every year, from about May to September, since childhood. Antihistamines alone worked great for about 15yrs but since then it’s been an endless battle trying to keep it under control and now nothing seems to work. I’ve tried multiple different antihistamines, quadrupling the dose, adding an H2 blocker and now Montelukast.

Each time I’ve tried it, I’ve had some weird swelling in my neck/throat. It feels like all my lymph nodes are full. The first time the swelling was mostly under my tongue. I would stop the drug and things would clear up in a few days. I tried again a week ago and last night, my neck and throat became so swollen I was beginning to feel I couldn’t breathe properly. It was like breathing through a straw and I was wheezing every time I breathed in (I’ve never had asthma or any lung conditions). I took some chlorphenamine which helped and didn’t take any more Montelukast. Today, I can breathe much better but the swelling isn’t fully gone.

Has anyone else had this? Or any idea why this happens? I can’t understand what it is or what’s going on. I don’t think it’s a known side effect of Montelukast so I’m worried the doctor will think I’m crazy.

When I first started using ChatGPT (the free version), I had no problem getting everything done and very rarely reached the usage limit. Even on the few occasions that I did, it would reset within 30 mins. I could upload large documents, write long reports and fine-tune lengthy responses over hours, with no problems at all.

I’ve noticed in the last few months that I started to reach the limit quite quickly, regularly having to stop and wait a few hours. Today, I was cut off after uploading one single-page letter!

Is this what they do to encourage people to sign up for Plus? Or have the limits been reduced overall recently?

This is on the NHS. My GP referred me and after a 10 month wait, I’ve finally got an appointment in 6 weeks time. I had been getting my hopes up about this clinic, thinking they would be the experts on dealing with severe pain but now I’ve read a transcript of what actually happens there and it seems more like they just encourage people to think positive and maybe offer physio. None of which is going to help with TN. They even made excuses that it must be a mental health problem instead of a true pain problem because the patient was now feeling depressed and had lost interest in exercise, socialising etc. Being shocked in the face multiple times per day will do that! 🙄

I’m still waiting to see the neurologist but that’s been years already and could be many more so this clinic is my only hope for the time being.

Has anyone been to one of these clinics? Was it any use? Are they all this bad?

I’m in Northern Ireland. My family are abusive and I was taken into care as a child due to this. I avoid them as much as possible because they will still try to hurt me at any opportunity. They’ve told me they wish I was dead because I ‘shamed the family’ by speaking out. My fear is that someday I’ll have a catastrophic accident/illness and be unconscious in hospital and the staff will ring my family and tell them where I am. Is there any way to prevent this? My family are very middle class ‘pillar of the community’ types and can easily manipulate people so it won’t be obvious to the staff that there’s any danger.