A patient complained of severe right face and TMJ pain. She said the pain began developing approximately 10 minutes after an adjustment one week ago, at which time I did adjust her sphenoid bone. She said that the pain had been worsening all week and that initially she thought it was some dental problem so she went to her dentist who could find nothing wrong.

She did mention that she thought we may have uncovered some stuff. She used to suffer from mild to moderate TMJ problems approximately 25 years ago but this was far and away worse than anything she'd ever experienced.

My first thought was that it was trigeminal neuralgia, and the OD agreed. Checking priorities, I found the right sacroiliac joint, left sphenoid, right zygomatic arch, right TMJ, right temporal bone, right squamosal suture, right hard palate, C1 to the right and C5 straight posterior. That cleared the priorities.

An emotional issue came up - stress with her husband. She confirmed that she had been suppressing emotions including anger towards her husband and was putting off talking about it. I had her focus on her relationship with her husband; C3 and S3 needed adjusting. After processing a few minutes C7 was indicated.

When she came in her pain was out of 10 out of 10, she was crying from it. After her adjustment the pain was two or three out of 10 and she was crying from the emotional release. She asked me what to do and I told her to simply talk to her husband about what she'd been feeling.