The TMJ Association - changing the face of TMJ

TMJ Resources - Our Family - Patient Talk

Felicia

I can't believe I have just found this site. I have suffered with terrible TMJ pain for 12 years now. It all began with a surgery I had at the age of 16. I woke with a busted lip, but all they said was I had "fought the breathing tube", whatever that meant. Within a few months, the right side of my jaw was popping and I was having the worst headaches of my life. My orthodontist immediately put me into a splint I wore 24/7. I never improved...we went to braces and several more splints with no relief. Somehow, it eventually improved for a year or so. Unfortunately, it had to return. When it returned in January of 2000, it was horrendous. I didn't want to move my jaw, the nausea, jaw pain, and headaches were terrible. I also began to notice that I had to shift my jaw to the left in order to close my mouth. It was back to the orthodontist again. He did an MRI which showed little or no movement f the disc. He then sent me to a TMJ specialist in another city to be evaluated. At this point I had been suffering for 10 years. The specialist examined me and automatically recommended laparoscopic reconstruction of both joints. The surgery was much easier than I thought. Unfortunately, six weeks out I was talking one day and my right joint slipped out of place. He eventually had to go back into the right joint to resuture the disc because it had slipped again. I saw a decent improvement in symptoms after a couple of months. My jaw no longer popped, my range of motion improved, and the headaches grew much less frequent. In January of 2002, I had to have surgery to repair my nose. From the moment I woke from surgery, I was in excruciating pain with my jaw. I knew something must have gone wrong. Within a couple of weeks I was back in my TMJ surgeon's office, crying from the pain, begging for some kind of relief. He did another MRI, but it was normal. He finally had to do another surgery on the right joint...the structure was fine, but he had to remove a lot of inflamed tissue. I never got any relief from this surgery. We decided to try a course of physical therapy. The physical therapist discovered a misalignment of my neck that he felt was causing my pain. He "adjusted" my neck and I received the first pain relief I had felt in about 10 weeks. Unfortunately, the relief only lasted a couple of weeks. I decided to try chiropractic care then. This helped some for a while, but now the pain is back once again. I am currently in another splint 24/7, taking meds for inflammation every day, taking pain meds, and undergoing another round of physical therapy. Nothing is helping. I hurt every day, almost all day. I am very depressed right now. My orthodontist wants me to return to my surgeon, but I am scared to have to go through another surgery. Worse yet, I am scared of being told there is nothing more anyone can do. No one I know deals with this "disorder". No one can understand how horrible it really is. I am glad I have found this site. I hope to learn some new things to help me cope with this pain, and hopefully renew my hope that one day I will be pain free.