Temporomandibular Joint Disorder

posted to Superhero Tryouts? by Bobby (12:30 a.m., September 28, 2009)

Can you say that correctly the first time?

Great. Fantastic. There's no contest though, but pat yourself on the back.  While you're doing that, grab a seat and get ready for story time with Bobby.  Today's story proves to be humorous, jaw dropping (no pun intended), and sexual.  Reader Discretion is advised (not really).

So after a long night of partying with friends and driving drunk people home at 2am with my first roommate, I retired home late Saturday night to watch a few episodes of The Spectacular Spiderman.  Suddenly 5:30am snuck up on me, so I decided to call it quits for a bit.  After multiple text message conversations between 10am and 1pm that I can't remember doing without checking my phone later in the day, I finally resumed consciousness around 2:30pm Sunday afternoon. After a refreshing shower I prepared pancakes for Joe and myself before we began our evening.  He had plans to visit Erin, and I had plans to continue watching Spiderman. At about 4:30pm we suddenly noticed Riley had eaten the USB plug to Joe's external hard drive, so season 2 remains inaccessible for the time being.  He vomitted said plug a few minutes later.

Now before I get into the rest of the story, let me give you a little background information on my case of TMJ. To keep it simple, my jaw does not align right with my skull.  If I open my mouth all the way, my left side of my jaw is open all the way before the right side is.  When I demonstrate this to people, it pretty noticeable, as I can pop my jaw two separate time when both opening and closing my mouth (it's both an audible and visual popping).  Now, when you yawn, you are stretching the muscles that control the movement of your jaw, both on the verticle and horizontal axiis.  The problem with me, however, is that when I open my mouth to its fullest without a proper pre-yawn, it can get stuck open because the muscles aren't streched enough to fix it.  Usually this only occurs for a few seconds before I either rotate my jaw back into alignment or massage the muscle.

So back to the story. At about 4:55pm, Joe exits the apartment to go to Erin's.  A few seconds later, I let out a massive yawn.  I mean huge, it was quite satisfying.  As I begin to close my mouth, I'm stopped by the hinge of my jaw hitting my skull. "Ok," I think, "I just need to rotate this into place."  After about a minute and a half of this, I give up and walk outside to stop Joe from riding off.  Imagine the difficulty of saying "Joe, my jaw is stuck open." with your jaw stuck open.  He comes inside, and after I try massaging, rotating, and hitting my jaw, I diagnose it as Lockjaw.  Joe suggests we go to the ER, so I grab my things and head to the car.  In an attempt to prevent this story from turning into a novel, I'll give you the play by play, with the pain scale at the end. 1-10, 10 being the worst.

• 5:05pm - Leave the apartment for the ER. 1
  
• 5:15pm - Arrive at the ER, wait to get checked in.  Roof of my mouth is dry; I learn how to drink and swallow water without using my upper lip or tongue. Joe mentions ease of blow job jokes. 2
  
• 5:30pm - Begin the check-in process. 3
  
• 5:55pm - Nurse calls me in to check vitals and get the jist of what is wrong. 5
• 6:10pm - I get a bed in the hall while I wait for the doctor to inspect me. 6
• *6:20pm - Doctor explains that the muscle used to move my jaw had a spasm and is extremely tense. He gives me the option of manual reallignment or sedation.  Sedation would require another 30-45 minutes of waiting due to recent pancake ingestion. Multiple attempts at manual reallignment fail. Nurse gives me an IV in preparation for sedation. 8
• 6:30pm - I'm moved into a room where they can properly treat me. Swallowing pooled up saliva is at its peak of difficulty. 9
• 6:45pm - I'm given a thing of morphine, a thing of some muscle relaxant, and another thing of morphine. 9
• *6:50 - Doctor comes in and begins to manually reallign my jaw again now that I have a muscle relaxant and morphine in my system before resorting to sedation. 5
• 6:55pm - I can speak, spit, swallow, and dampen the roof of my mouth like a normal human being.  I demonstrate to the doctor how my jaw lines up weird.  In an attempt to demostrate how I normally remedy the situation on my own, it gets stuck again.  Doctor performs his magic again to fix it (there's a reason I did it in front of him rather than after I got home). 2
• 7:00pm - Joe and I leave the ER to buy my new prescription meds, pizza, and juice.  Did you know there's only one 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy in CoMo? It's the one at Providence and Broadway. 0
  
• ~9:00pm - Home at last.  Pizza goes in the oven, Medicine goes in the tummy, Chance comes to the apartment.

*In order to realign my jaw, the doctor grasped my jaw by placing his thumbs on my molars and clasping under my jaw.  He then began to rotate it in all directions in an attempt to do what the tightened muscle is suppose to do. Can you imagine someone yanking your jaw around like they're performing the Konami Code?  I can, because I experienced it with and without morphine, and Joe can because he watched the doctor do it.  And let me tell you, this guy was putting everything he had into it. You'd think he'd try to be delicate so as to not break my jaw.  Nono, he was putting his whole weight behind it.  Joe claimed he was on his tip toes, and I believe him.

So now that everything is said and done, I have to actively beware of opening my mouth all the way, because for the next 6-8 weeks I'm extra susceptible to it happening again, as proven at the ER when demonstrating to the doctor.  Now that I'm home and no longer in any serious pain, I'm taking it easy for a day or two. And right now my medicine is really starting to hit me, so I bid you all good night.

-Bobby

Is it too late to remind you how we were?