My Jaw Story

So, I've titled this Non-Jaw Surgery Blog, because I wanted to be a resource for those of you who might be thinking that jaw surgery is the only option. I'm not a doctor, just someone who was told that they would only experience relief through surgery. I want to share the path that I took instead, which was the non-jaw surgery path.

Granted, this isn't the right choice for everyone and I really feel for those of you who must undertake that very long and difficult process. I was preparing myself to face this not long ago. However, for those of you who might be able to take a more conservative route and just don't know it yet, (Like me) I would like to be a resource for you!

I will start with my story. At about 14 years old, I got an injury to my jaw. I was kicked in the face during an innocent martial arts class. It was an accident, but it really hurt like hell! I spent the next week or so unable to fully open my jaw and then the following months I would wake up in agony and frustration.

Eventually this subsided and it had appeared that my jaw healed, but from then on I think it was never quite the same.

Flash forward to about 18 years old. I started to develop an open bite. It wasn't painful per se, but it made it very difficult for me to bite and chew properly. I grew concerned that the issue would progress so I went to an orthodontist that was recommended by a dentist who was a family friend of ours. She took quick pictures of my jaw, and didn't really look at my bite up close. She came in and sat down and basically told me that my lower jaw was too short and that it wasn't that bad of an open bite. 

My main concern and question was whether or not this would get worse. She told me it would not. Further more she told me that the only option was braces and that even after getting braces, I would need to constantly wear something to prevent the teeth from moving again.

Feeling somewhat defeated, but accepting that I would have to simply live with this open bite situation, I began college and just learned to compensate with my other teeth.

It was sometime during my freshman year in college that I realized my jaw was slightly askewed. It was tilted downward to my right side. This caused me some distress as I thought something was terribly wrong. This wasn't something that I had ever noticed before, and I felt it was a developing problem. 

My family assured me that it was just the asymmetry of the body and I tried to accept this as well. It wasn't very noticeable from my face unless I picked my chin up, so I once again tried to ignore it.

Flash forward to just a year ago, I was about 24 years old when I decided to take matters into my own hands. It was very clear to me that something was wrong with my jaw as I had begun to experience painful TMJ for a while now. Throughout college I would be out of classes from tweaking my neck. I would have terrible muscle pain that would have me nauseous and unable to move. It would take me a week to heal. This progress to having stabbing pains in my ears. 

I thought this would just due to have some neck sprains, and just thought it was something I would have to deal with. However by the time I was 24 years old, my jaw really began to tense and become painful. The stabbing ear pain was becoming unbearable at times, and I was starting to see my jaw shift further backwards and also the cant was much more noticeable. The aesthetics was becoming a personal distress as  my face began to change. It was subtle, but my profile was different than I remembered. My jaw was beginning to become recessed. Something that only I seemed to notice, but I think when you know yourself you noticed these things much more.

Ultimately I decided that I need to revisit an orthodontist. I made my appointment and went in. What was very validating for me was that the orthodontist could see what I was seeing, but my family and friends were unable. She saw that I was in pain and that my bite, jaw, and TMJ was the problem. This was a relief, that the pain I was going through was valid and not in my head. However when the possibility of surgery came up, the fear set in. There are many things that can go wrong with surgery, not to mention the cost, the healing time, and the amount of money leading up to the surgery that would include an orthotic and braces for at least a couple years. 

I started researching and learning as much as possible about it. To be honest I kept coming up with the same conclusion, in order to move my jaw forward to its ideal spot, I would need to have it broken and reshaped. At this point I began to just face the reality of the situation. The years of orthotic to braces to recovery, how I would afford the cost of everything, having to dedicate years of my life to this was depressing plain and simple. I pretty much tried to surrender to this idea.

My family was very much against this from the beginning, but I was certain that something had to be done. I didn't want my current state of pain and discomfort to continue, and judging from the doctor's analysis, to increase and get worse. I wanted to deal with it now, but how?

After getting a CT scan, they could see how the left condyle was longer than the right, which was the cause of the tilt to my jaw. They also could see how my joints were degenerating, the tops of the condyles were pounding down and rounded, possibly from hitting into the joint for so long. It wasn't the worst she had seen, but it certainly wasn't great, and the degeneration was that of someone perhaps twice my age. 

Scared and wanting to just get the process started, I began pushing towards surgery. My family pushed back though and I'm very grateful for that. We began researching further and the term Neuromuscular Dentistry came up. Now, I want to be clear that I am completely unbiased. I do not work for a dentist and I'm not endorsing them in any way. This is simply the route I took and I was not asked to write about it or promote it for any ulterior motives.

Well I'm very glad I looked into this further. Neuromuscular Dentistry looks into how the muscles are being affected by the position of the jaw. I began to see visually in myself that it wasn't so much my jaw that had to be broken and grown, it simply needed to be shifted forward. However my current bite was preventing it from sliding forward. Wear and tear on my teeth had given me this uncomfortable bite and it was affecting my joints and muscles. 

With this conservative approach I would be able to find the ideal comfortable position of my jaw in a non-invasive, and reversible (if need be) way.

In my next post I'll explain to you what happened at my first appointment with the Neuromuscular Dentist.