The surgical firecracker
Updated On: 12 November, 2023 07:26 AM IST | Mumbai | Dr Mazda Turel
Glossopharyngeal neuralgia causes pain sudden and severe enough to feel like a phataka going off in your mouth. Awareness about such rare conditions is half the battle won
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Mrs Pednekar walked into the clinic with her husband. They looked like they were in their sixties. Simple, warm people dressed in pastels, they joined their hands in a namaste with bowed heads as they took their seats. “My husband has been in severe pain for 10 years,” she told me, her eyes welling up. We often see patients break down in the clinic within a few seconds of their arrival, even with little being said or done. I imagine the office seems like a portal where they feel they can release pent-up angst, anxiety, or energy.
I allowed for her to feel soothed and then continued. “Where is the pain?” I enquired. “In the left side of the throat,” he said, his face clenching in a tumultuous spasm simply with the utterance of three words. “He cannot talk, eat, chew, or swallow when he gets these random bouts of pain multiple times a day—and it’s been several years now,” his wife continued, allowing for his electric shock-like sensation to settle. “But in the past three months, it’s become unimaginably unbearable. He’s lost 12 kilos because he fears eating will trigger a spasm,” she concluded.
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