“I started having numbness in my lip. At first, I thought it was some sort of allergy, but then I started having excruciating facial shocks – 15 to 20 a day — that would last about 20 seconds and bring me to my knees. I’d drop to the floor and cry,” says Natalia, a stay-at-home mother of two and patient at the CyberKnife Center of Miami.
Natalia had a nerve disorder called Trigeminal Neuralgia. It’s a condition that affects facial nerves.
According to WebMD Symptoms Can Include:
- Brief periods of shooting or stabbing pain
- Pain triggered by touching your face or even a light breeze
- Episodes can last a few seconds to a few minutes or longer
- Pain usually affects one side of your face
“It was so awful for me, but I worried most about my daughters seeing me in such pain, I wasn’t myself anymore and it scared them. It was the worst pain you could ever have,” Natalia says.
Anyone who has ever experienced chronic pain can relate. The unrelenting pain that can be triggered at any time brings about fear, anxiety and even depression.
Natalia went to a neurologist who put her on anti-seizure medications, a common first-line treatment for Trigeminal Neuralgia, but that didn’t work.
“The pain got worse, so I was given another medication, which made me tired. I was in bed all the time, had to be in a dark room when I had a flare-up. I was depressed, losing my hair, always hungry and gained 20 pounds. It changed everything and affected my whole family. It was terrible for my daughters to see me like that, having attacks all the time. They suffered a lot, were very sad and scared,” Natalia says.
Trigeminal Neuralgia Treatment
That’s when Natalia started looking for other options.
“I saw the surgery for Trigeminal Neuralgia and didn’t want to go through all that cutting and trauma. Luckily, I came across CyberKnife Radiation Therapy, a non-invasive way to treat it and it sounded so amazing, so I started looking for where it’s done in South Florida and discovered the CyberKnife Center of Miami,” she says.
Lifesaving Trigeminal Neuralgia Treatment
CyberKnife can often effectively manage the pain of trigeminal neuralgia with just one treatment the session, according to the experts at CyberKnife Miami.
The name is a little misleading because CyberKnife is not a knife at all. It’s a state-of-the-art system that delivers high doses of radiation beams with extreme precision to desensitize the trigeminal nerve.
“I met with Dr. Mark Pomper. He’s the chief radiation oncologist and medical director at the center. He was amazing. He gave me a full medical exam and looked at all my scans. The team is so thorough. He explained everything to me in such a simple way. He and everyone there gave me such confidence. Dr. Pomper kept telling me don’t be so nervous. He said it will probably require only one radiation treatment session,” Natalia says.
And Dr. Pomper was right. All it took was one treatment.
Dr. Pomper explains how CyberKnife has changed the treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia over the years to Health Specialist Marilyn Mitzel.
“At first after the treatment, I was afraid to sneeze or cough fearing it would set off another pain attack like usual, but it didn’t. I did feel a bit more nerve pain in my face right after the treatment. But after a few weeks, I was off the pain medication, and I felt nothing. It took me a month to stop being so cautious and realize the pain was not coming back,” she says.
Thanks to CyberKnife Miami, Natalia has her life back. She already has two beautiful daughters, and now that she’s pain-free she can focus on growing her family by having another child.
Cancer Treatment Center Miami
Cyberknife Miami opened its doors nearly 20 years ago and was the first Cyberknife center to open in the Southeast and the 11th center to open in the United States.
Since that time, we have successfully treated thousands of patients.
CyberKnife can be used to treat Trigeminal Neuralgia and other medical conditions like cancers of the prostate, lungs, breast, kidneys, pancreas, head and neck, lymph nodes and brain as well as other metastatic cancers.
“My best advice to anyone who will listen is, you don’t have to live in pain, take pills for the rest of your life or go through risky, invasive surgery. Do your research and check out CyberKnife. It works,” Natalia says.
If you are interested in learning more about CyberKnife Miami call us at 305-279-2900 or go to our website now www.cyberknifemiami.com.