I'm back!

Some two years, five-plus specialist assessments, ten-plus different prescriptions, a lot of frustration, even more pain, and finally, some clarity brought a (partial) end to my more than a year away

Some 18 or so months ago, I went on short-term disability because of a chronic pain condition that my doctors thought at the time was garden-variety temporomandibular joint dysfunction or TMJ-D for short.

For those unfamiliar, TMJ-D is a chronic pain condition marked by friction and inflammation at the joint where your jaw meets your skull. That friction and inflammation cause pain, nausea, vertigo, tinnitus — a whole bunch of unsavoury stuff like that.

I’d only been diagnosed two or three months prior, but the array of symptoms that prompted me to seek that diagnosis had been on the scene for nearly a year. Those symptoms? Constant searing, burning pain above my ear and around my temple, muscle spasms on the right side of my face, and yes, some soreness around the right side of my jaw, among others. They came on slowly in December 2023, and then suddenly in the spring of 2024. If you want to know more about that, you can read it in the “I can’t take this anymore, I’m out” blog post that marked my trip to the injured reserve.

The TMJ-D specialist that I was seeing at the time seemed reasonably optimistic that with a couple of months, maybe six or so, of physiotherapy, massage therapy, and a couple instalments of Botox, we could get this all sorted. Ah, wouldn’t that have been nice?

One problem: I didn’t necessarily need to sort out my jaw joint. The physiotherapist that I was sent to on my specialist’s recommendation began to suspect that I was dealing with a neurological condition rather than a mechanical one within a few weeks of seeing me. They only became more convinced as my jaw’s condition improved without any knock-on improvements to the constant, burning, searing pain around my temple or any cessation to the muscle spasms on that side of my face. We got to the point where I could eat hard food again with little if any fuss in almost no time at all, but the pain around my temple kept getting worse and the spasms more disruptive.

Still, my TMJ-D specialist insisted for months that my jaw joint was at fault, throwing one prescription after another at the problem while I made fruitless trips to my confused physiotherapist. We started with the relatively simple stuff, like muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories, but eventually got into the anti-spasmodics and nerve pain medications. All told, I think I’ve been dealt some 10-plus different prescriptions — gabapentin, pregabalin, baclofen, celecoxib, memantine, cylobenzaprine, tizanidine, ubrelvy, naltrexone all jump out by memory. To say that these almost invariably made things worse would be an understatement.

At their least disruptive, these medications were sedating to the point that I barely felt conscious; at their worst, my brain felt so totally scrambled that I’m not sure I knew where or who I was at times. Nearly every one of these drugs was addictive — err… sorry, came with physical dependencies, crucial distinction, apparently — and the constant game of yo-yo from one pill to another was such that the pain was practically secondary to the grim feelings that came with withdrawing from one drug and before starting anew with another.

Eventually, even my TMJ-D specialist came around to the obvious, which was that what we were dealing with was neurological in nature. He sent referrals to pain clinics, referrals to people who work with neurological movement disorders, new requisitions for imaging — you name it. No stone unturned, and so on.

The catch? This stuff takes time, and the considerable amount of it spent operating under the (misguided) assumption that I was dealing with run-of-the-mill TMJ-D cost us a lot. It also cost me a lot of out-of-pocket money, but that’s neither here nor there.

I didn’t get in with the pain clinic until late November of 2025. In a twist of irony, the two years spent without a proper diagnosis were resolved in less than 15 minutes when I saw the appropriate specialist. They heard my story and quickly determined that I was dealing with a neurological injury called occipital neuralgia paired with central nervous system sensitivity syndrome. A quick — and excruciatingly painful — shot of fast-acting lidocaine up the nerve late confirmed as much.

To give my family doctor some credit here, we’d started operating under the assumption that I had a condition called trigeminal neuralgia in the summer, just for lack of a better explanation, and it turns out that was pretty damn close.

Now, what’s occipital neuralgia, you may wonder? Well, you have a pair of nerves that run up the base of both sides of your skull to about your forehead called the occipital nerves, one greater and one lesser. When they are injured or inflamed — as happened when I sustained a concussion by falling on the back of my head playing beer league hockey in December of 2022 — they hurt… a lot. In my case, it’s chronic, but I’ve had the odd flare-up that’s nearly brought me to my knees; I had needling done recently, and the end result was a pain that felt as if lightning bolts were wrapping around my skull. I couldn’t even wear a hat, and my pillow felt like a flat-top grill. Let’s just say that its nickname, “the suicide disease,” is well-earned, because at its worst, this pain is truly unbearable.

The central nervous system sensitivity syndrome (sometimes referred to as centralization syndrome) just means — and I’m paraphrasing my neurologist here — that I’ve been in so much pain for so long that my nervous system has become sensitive and “centralized” it and is distributing pain signals into technically unaffected areas. This would explain the random, intermittent jolts of pain up and down the right side of my face and the extreme sensitivity to medication and other nervous system stimuli.

As for the rest? You can chalk that up to something called functional neurological disorder. I’m paraphrasing a neurologist and movement disorder specialist again here, but that just means the neurological wiring is fine relative to some of the symptoms it is producing, but is nonetheless misfiring. It’s a relatively common condition and often occurs when a preexisting neurological impairment is already in place; in my case, occipital neuralgia. For me specifically, this manifests in the aforementioned facial muscle spasms, sensitivity to certain stimuli, and mild speech dysfunction.

To put this all another way: My nervous system is all fucked up. And the problem with having a fucked up nervous system is that it’s connected to just about everything. As I’m learning, you get one neurological impairment and sometimes it just kind of snowballs, especially when it’s not treated, or in my case, improperly treated.

What does it all mean? Well, just for a start, I finally have an explanation for the unrelenting physical and mental anguish of the last few years: I hit my head really hard, injured my occipital nerves, and the condition got worse and spawned knock-on problems. It also means that we have a path forward. I’m going to be spending a lot of time with my physiotherapist in the coming weeks, months, etc., and shots of lidocaine directly into the affected nerves won’t be much further off in the distance.

I’ve also made a series of lifestyle changes that should help some. I completely quit drinking — for now, hopefully… — in the spring of 2025. I cut out caffeine and added sugars from my diet not long after. I’ve been trying to eat according to anti-inflammatory diet guidelines whenever possible. Just about anything I can do to improve my overall and neurological health is being done.

With any luck, all of this will add up to a durable, long-term resolution and a return to some semblance of the life I knew before everything went to shit.

Because I’m not there now. Not by a long shot. The sad reality of my situation is that the place I’m in today is where I should have been when I went on disability back in September of 2024. Because of a mis(sed)diagnosis, though, much if not all of that time that I should have spent treating this condition was spent managing its symptoms, if that. Frankly, I feel as if things were made worse.

All this is to say that it’s going to be some time before I’m back to where I was when you last saw me or heard from me. I’m still in a lot of pain. I’m still struggling with the medication regimen I’m on; perhaps more to the point, struggling with the escape from it. Things could be better, I guess.

So, what’s new then? Well, for starters, we know what we’re working with, and I finally have the resources to treat it. Unburdened by $300-plus (at a minimum…) trips to my TMJ-D specialist and supported by my disability insurer, we can really put all the resources we need into treating this.

I’ve also completed a six-week chronic pain course. A lot of it wasn’t earth-shattering, granted, but the coping techniques, lifestyle advice, and access to an occupational therapist have or ought to help.

So, no, I’m not doing great now, and I probably won’t be anytime in the short-to-medium term, but I’ve got a bunch of different reasons to think that things might slowly but surely start getting better.

Because of all that, I’m going to give a return to work at Elite Prospects a shot, on a part-time basis, as part of a gradual return-to-work program through my insurer. For now, I’ll work two days a week, and we’ll go from there.

Obviously, I’m a little bit nervous about it all. This is the longest layoff of my life. I’ve been working at least one job in near-perpetuity since I was 14-years-old, a couple of tours of employment insurance duty as a painter aside. And the fact remains that I’m limping back to my station; these are far from ideal conditions.

I’m also pretty excited about it all. I got into this line of work because it’s what I’m most passionate about; I love scouting, I love having takes and stirring it up online, I love writing… more to the point, I just love hockey and the little part I play in the hockey world.

That I get to do all this with such wonderful, supportive people as the company we keep at Elite Prospects just makes it that much better. I can’t stress enough how great they’ve all been about this. Whether it was Peter Sibner’s support as my employer or Sean Shapiro stepping into my stead on the editing desk or Mitch Brown growing into his new role with the company, and on, and on — everyone had my back and gave me the space I needed to put my health first.

Unfortunately, I probably won’t be travelling to any tournaments or hanging out in a rink anytime soon. But I’ll be around, watching as much hockey and writing and scouting as often as my circumstances permit — perhaps even more often in this space, ideally on different terms for a change, too. This may read like a threat, but I’ll get back into the posting game, mostly if not exclusively on Bluesky, too.

It’s good to be back.