PHN for 10 years

According to Wikipedia, both these drugs are Garbapentin. ??I take 600 mg every 3 hours and use Lidocaine ointment plus sleeping aids  when sleeping. I'm able to get along with all this.

What may help is seeing your condition as a whole health one.  Having a healthy "clean" diet to start, whole foods, nothing processed, organic as possible, but also vitamin deficiencies.  Taking basic vitamins like C (a natural antiviral btw) D, and A daily I believe most people need especially as you get older. 

Brian,

Is your pain a result of shingles in those areas?  It sounds like you are describing the opthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve, which is where I have PHN [postherpetic neuralgia].  You probably know what PHN is since you are on this website, but I thought I would check. 

I've had PHN for 26 years.  I'm also a recently retired psychologist who specialized in chronic pain management for many years. 

Like most PHN patients, you are trying everything you can, to try to get control of the pain.  I had not heard of Gralise or Horizant, but in looking them up on the internet, they are basically gabapentin.  Gabapentin is probably the best of the oral meds for PHN.  I've heard fair results also with Lyrica, a similar drug.  Neurontin, another form of gabapentin that is an older drug, may be cheaper than some of the new variants. 

I do not use oral meds for pain control.  I use aspercreme, which has salicylate, and there are other products that are based on this chemical.  It provides fair relief, lets me concentrate on things other than the pain, and it helps me sleep better. 

Another very helpful, and unexpected discovery of mine recently, is that when I have a sudden worsening of itching and pain, it is usually due to mild dehydration.  I've discovered that drinking a 16 oz class of water will result in dramatic lessening of the exacerbation within about 30 minutes.  Nice!  And free!  Only took me 25 years to discover that! 

So, as I've written in other areas of this website, a main key to dealing with PHN or any chronic pain is to give up on the goal of getting completely rid of the pain.  Obviously, you don't do this until you've tried a lot of solutions first, and failed.  PHN is one of the hardest chronic pain conditions to treat, and docs admit they are very limited in their solutions.  So, when you reach this point of trying and failing to rid yourself of pain, it's time to switch your thinking from "eliminating pain" or "pain treatment" to "pain management."  This is a hard pill to swallow at first, giving up a "cure."  But, when I've seen people change over to focusing on pain management they did lots better, and when I did it many years ago, it made a dramatic improvement in my life. 

As long as we're looking for a cure, we will be constantly disappointed, angry, eventually depressed.  And, we reject things that work partially.  When we focus on management of pain, we accept partial solutions rather than discarding them.  And that's what works with chronic pain:  We find a number of things that work partially, and they add up to better control. 

An important practice that goes along with pain management is called cognitive restructuring, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT].  I've written to several others about this in some detail on this website, so you might look for those conversations.  Go to:

https://patient.info/forums/discuss/depression-with-phn--552486?page=0#2470428

for one of them.

Brian, please let me know if I can help further.   I hope this has been of some help.

In follow up to our discussion of a couple of days ago, I have found that a very predictable trigger is a substantial drop in the barametric pressure.  I usally know it is going to happen before the weatherpeople announce it.   Also, the best topical cream I have ever use is T-Relief, a homeopathic pain relief ointment.  It is made by MediNature and can only be obtained online.  The ingredients are labled un ARNICA+12