trigeminal symptoms and numb eye-improvement after surgery?

[flgi]

Hi
I've recently joined the forum- am a relative not a sufferer, but am writing on behalf of my mum(age 63). Am in the UK (Oxford)


She was diagnosed with what they thought was an AN a few years ago, and had the operation last Sept. Unfortunately they aborted the operation as they discovered it was a facial nerve neuroma and they couldn't get any of the tumour w/o cutting the facial nerve.

They thought gamma knife might be the answer- as it was within the right volume(2.5 am), but the gamma knife specialist said it was too cystic and the cysts might grow-so did not recommend this route.
To cut a long story short, she is now set to have surgery again and this time she knows she will have a her facial nerve cut- a daunting prospect.

The thing I worry about the most is her eye. She has acute pins and needles(trigeminal symptoms from one of the cysts in the tumour pressing on that nerve) in her face currently and also has a numb eye.

I've heard that the combination of no blink and no feeling means you are really likely to get corneal ulcers which can be v damaging

So I've basically got 2 main questions:
1) does anyone suffer from both no blink and  a numb cornea. If so, what did the doctors do to protect your eye?How soon after surgery?

2) Also, has anyone who had trigeminal symptoms(particularly numb eye) found these improved after surgery?The surgeon siad there was a good chance of this happening, but it seems lots of people do carry on suffering with them

I would really appreciate any comments on either of these questions.

I am feeling so anxious about the 2nd surgery, partic the thought of her losing her vision on top of everything else, and just thought I need to prepare myself as much as possible.

Thanks to all those who replied to my questions on facial grafts

Flora

[Jeanlea]

Hi Flora,

Your mum has a wonderful daughter to be so helpful in gathering information for her.  I'm sure you are a great support for her.  That is important.  I had my AN surgery almost 3 years ago.  I ended up with a numb face, including the eye, an and facial parlysis, which means no blinking.  The day after my day long surgery I had a patch put on my eye.  It was clear.  About 6 six days after surgery I had a gold weight put in my eyelid to help me blink.  For the first few months I taped my eye shut each day and kept ointment in it during the day.  Now I put in gel during or ointment during the day and it closes at night well enough that I don't need to tape it.  It took me a little while to get used to one blurry eye.  Now I have no problems.  People do well with vision in only one eye and I do get some vision out of the blurry one.  I must add that my facial nerve was not actually cut, but it must have been severly smushed. I have fully returned to my normal day to day activities. I know that everyone is different.  Hope this helps you. 

I wish your mum all the best.

Jean