Chicago – The teenager said the stabbing pains in her face felt like electrical shocks that lasted 10 to 30 seconds and struck 20 to 30 times a day.
Her doctors diagnosed trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder sometimes called “suicide disease” because of its excruciating and dispiriting pain.
Doctors tried painkillers, then stronger medication, but in the end, a cure proved more simple: The young woman removed the metal stud from her pierced tongue. Two days later, her pain vanished.
The account in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association is the latest documentation of complications, some life-threatening, linked to tongue piercing. Other problems include tetanus, heart infections, brain abscesses, chipped teeth and receding gums. One woman developed so much scar tissue that it resembled what she called a “second tongue.”
In the newly reported case, the young Italian woman’s mouth jewelry apparently irritated a nerve running along the jaw under her tongue. That nerve is connected to the trigeminal nerve, one of the largest in the head.
Jeanne Fritch, owner of a piercing and tattooing studio in Lake Station, Ind., hadn’t heard of a similar case in her 21 years in business. She called good hygiene and “implant grade” metal jewelry essential.
