The joint is jumping
2002-07-20 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearThe temporomandibular joint, in this case. Somehow I managed to dislocate my jaw sometime Wednesday afternoon. It wasn't until the next morning that I thought of opening my mouth wide and wiggling it around, which got the darned thing back into position.
I was in moderate pain all of Wednesday evening; trying to eat, of course, made it worse. My usual painkillers, aspirin and gin, helped somewhat.
Even after I popped the joint back into position the next morning, I was in some pain; biting down hard on something is still a bit painful. Apparently almost all of the residual pain is due to muscle spasm, which I'm quite familiar with from my lower back.
Gin, I've been told, contains a muscle relaxant extracted from the juniper berries. I need to go out tomorrow and buy another bottle.
All-in-all I got off easy; a little research on the web (search for TMJ and you'll find it) showed that it can become a major problem, with the jaw wandering all over the place and little things like talking and eating becoming a major ordeal.
The net result for me was a couple of sore jaw muscles, a fact sheet on ``Temporomandibular Joint Pain and Dysfunction Syndrome'' from Kaiser, a new bookmark to tmj.org, and considerable sympathy for the folks with serious TMJ problems. Hopefully that will be all for a good long while, but one never knows.
I was in moderate pain all of Wednesday evening; trying to eat, of course, made it worse. My usual painkillers, aspirin and gin, helped somewhat.
Even after I popped the joint back into position the next morning, I was in some pain; biting down hard on something is still a bit painful. Apparently almost all of the residual pain is due to muscle spasm, which I'm quite familiar with from my lower back.
Gin, I've been told, contains a muscle relaxant extracted from the juniper berries. I need to go out tomorrow and buy another bottle.
All-in-all I got off easy; a little research on the web (search for TMJ and you'll find it) showed that it can become a major problem, with the jaw wandering all over the place and little things like talking and eating becoming a major ordeal.
The net result for me was a couple of sore jaw muscles, a fact sheet on ``Temporomandibular Joint Pain and Dysfunction Syndrome'' from Kaiser, a new bookmark to tmj.org, and considerable sympathy for the folks with serious TMJ problems. Hopefully that will be all for a good long while, but one never knows.