{"id":942265,"date":"2026-10-22T16:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T16:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/942265\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T16:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T16:24:09","slug":"i-spent-7-years-battling-excruciating-suicide-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/942265\/","title":{"rendered":"I spent 7 years battling excruciating \u2018suicide disease\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natisha \u201cTish\u201d Long is familiar with what\u2019s considered to be the most agonizing<\/a> sensations known to humans.<\/p>\n

Since 2018, an unbearable \u201cshocking, throbbing pain\u201d would course through her face at random, lasting from seconds to minutes each time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got my shocks, it was all-in-one, everything hit me,\u201d she told The Post. Every second that passed felt like an eternity. \u201cIt\u2019s just there and you\u2019re waiting for it to ease up. Sometimes I\u2019d have to stop and just wait until that whole shock was over with before I could function.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long says people noticed how much pain she was in because her smile disappeared. Natisha Long<\/p>\n

The mom of four has trigeminal neuralgia, a neurological condition nicknamed the \u201csuicide disease<\/a>\u201d because of how brutal its episodes are.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t smile, you can\u2019t brush your teeth, you can\u2019t wash your face. Any little thing, the wind hitting it, it\u2019s pain,\u201d Long said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that these episodes cause extreme emotional distress, anxiety and depression. It\u2019s not just a nickname \u2014\u00a0research shows people with this disease are at increased risk of suicide<\/a> and self harm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But experts are trying to move away from the nickname because treatment options are available that provide long-term relief. After seven long years, Long found it for herself with a first-in-the-world procedure at University Hospitals in Ohio.<\/p>\n

Tish\u2019s story<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very, very hard to function because I still had to work and be a mom,\u201d she said. \u201cI was working through pain \u2026 I don\u2019t know how I did it. When I look back, I\u2019m like, how did I go to work for 12 hours and put like this little game face on?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her condition stole both her signature smile and bubbly personality.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt work, people could see [the pain] in my face,\u201d she said. They\u2019d ask her what\u2019s wrong, and in response, \u201cI had to mumble. I couldn\u2019t really open my mouth too much so I wouldn\u2019t get triggered; I tried to be as quiet as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to sleep in pain, you\u2019re waking up in the pain. [My friends] always knew, Tish has to have her bag of pills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tish Long<\/p>\n

It all started with tingling on her upper jaw. She saw a dentist multiple times, who couldn\u2019t find anything wrong. She was prescribed a new toothpaste and mouthwash, but neither helped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pain spread down to her lower jaw and got worse. She saw a physician, who suggested it might be facial neuropathy, a broader category of nerve dysfunction in the face that can include numbness and constant, dull pain.<\/p>\n

Doctors prescribed gabapentin and carbamazepine, which initially helped.<\/p>\n

Long smiles after a successful procedure with her family. Natisha Long<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as you wake up, you take your pills because you\u2019re gonna wake up in pain,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to sleep in pain, you\u2019re waking up in the pain. [My friends] always knew, Tish has to have her bag of pills \u2026 if I forgot, I\u2019m like, I got to go home. You know, I can\u2019t function.\u201d<\/p>\n

But soon, her episodes became even more frequent and intense, breaking through the little relief the medicine provided.<\/p>\n

Treating trigeminal neuralgia<\/p>\n

The most common form of the condition occurs when a blood vessel presses against the trigeminal nerve near the brainstem. The pressure can damage the nerve\u2019s protective covering, causing it to send pain signals erratically.<\/p>\n

This causes that \u201cshocking, shooting, stabbing, lancing pain in your face,\u201d explains neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Staudt<\/a>, who treated Long at University Hospitals.<\/p>\n

Those medications Long was taking were originally developed to treat seizures, but they can also help calm overactive nerves and relieve nerve pain. Patients often have to increase their dose rapidly to keep up with worsening episodes, making tradeoffs with side effects like brain fog, confusion, and weight gain, Staudt said.<\/p>\n

Still, medication \u201cdoesn\u2019t work for everybody,\u201d he said, with \u201cat least 30%\u201d not seeing lasting relief from drugs. Long was one of the patients for whom medication no longer worked.<\/p>\n

So she underwent what\u2019s considered the standard for surgical treatment of the condition: microvascular decompression, which lifts that problematic blood vessel off the nerve using a little piece of sterile Teflon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something we do all the time, but it is brain surgery, it can take three-ish hours,\u201d Staudt said. \u201cThe patient has to be admitted for a couple days.\u201d Plus, there are risks that come with brain surgery, including infection and brain fluid leaks.<\/p>\n

The RF ablation machine was originally designed to treat epilepsy and was adapted to treat trigeminal neuralgia. NeuroOne<\/p>\n

That said, it\u2019s \u201cactually curative. The pain doesn\u2019t come back [in] about 70 to 80% of cases,\u201d he says. For a while, this surgery helped Long. She even went off medication.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen just all of a sudden one day I was hit again with this intense [pain]. I mean it was worse than the first time,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was debilitating. I knew exactly what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

She tried to get it back under control with medication for months, but \u201cit was just unbearable, even with the medicines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tish\u2019s first-in-the-world procedure<\/p>\n

With that first surgery a bust, Long got in touch with Staudt to do a radiofrequency ablation on the nerve. The procedure uses heat to damage specific nerve fibers that carry pain signals from the face to the brain.<\/p>\n

During the surgery, a needle is inserted about 2 cm off the side of the mouth. Using X-ray, surgeons find the trigeminal ganglion at the base of the skull, and doctors burn the nerve using radiofrequency. <\/p>\n

Long shows off the small wound to the side of her mouth as a result of her successful second surgery. Natisha Long<\/p>\n

After ablation, Long is pain-free and her smile has returned. Natisha Long<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we damage it, it stops the pain signals. You get numbness, typically,\u201d Staudt said. \u201cIt\u2019s like when you have novocaine for dental work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike microvascular decompression, ablation is minimally invasive and takes just 20 to 30 minutes, with results evident as patients are \u201crolling out of the operating room,\u201d Staudt said. However, the relief can be temporary. Over time, nerve fibers may recover, allowing the pain to return.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn average, it [takes] between two to five years,\u201d Staudt said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen patients 10, 20 years out. I\u2019ve seen patients come back in a month with pain. But on average, it\u2019s two to five years, and then they can come back and have another procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December, Long became the first patient in the world to undergo trigeminal nerve ablation using a new system called OneRF<\/a>. University Hospitals was the first health system to offer the technology.<\/p>\n

While the technique is \u201cnothing new,\u201d Staudt explains, the machine allows for a novel \u201cstreamlined\u201d procedure.<\/p>\n

OneRF\u2019s probe can map multiple nerve locations from a single insertion, rather than requiring surgeons to repeatedly reposition the needle.<\/p>\n

After her treatment, Long felt immediate relief from the excruciating shocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same day I just came home and it was just like a whole bunch of numbness\u2026 Like you had got your teeth pulled,\u201d she said. More importantly, \u201cno shocks, no triggers, no nothing over there, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Above all, she feels like herself again. \u201cWhen I came back to work, everybody was like, Oh, you\u2019re smiling!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Natisha \u201cTish\u201d Long is familiar with what\u2019s considered to be the most agonizing sensations known to humans. Since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[65342,49,48,26948,282,84,392,4852,202362,2856],"class_list":["post-942265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-brains","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-diseases","tag-exclusive","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-human-interest","tag-medical-disorders","tag-surgery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}