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ow.
Today has been a very difficult TMJ day. Actually a difficult week. Since I had the braces adjusted on Tuesday everything has hurt like hell. Two nights in a row the pain woke me up; this morning I went to the PT in the hope that he would be able to help not only with the head and neck and dizziness thing but also with the jaw thing. I may have cried a little while I was telling him about how hard my summer has been. Got a little electro-stim on my neck before I left, and that was fine, but my jaw has really never hurt so much.
I finally called the orthodontist's office, and he called back an hour later to agree that it shouldn't hurt this much and suggest a couple of things that might help. Bump the invisalign tray back to night-time only, for one; cut away the last molar from that tray if that doesn't work, for another. I came home and took 800mg of ibuprofen and all evening have been having limited success with a combination of heat and ice and stretching; when the pain ebbs it's not bad at all, just the sort of feeling like the joint is bruised (which by now it may be) - but when it stops ebbing it is excruciating.
Help. :-(
I finally called the orthodontist's office, and he called back an hour later to agree that it shouldn't hurt this much and suggest a couple of things that might help. Bump the invisalign tray back to night-time only, for one; cut away the last molar from that tray if that doesn't work, for another. I came home and took 800mg of ibuprofen and all evening have been having limited success with a combination of heat and ice and stretching; when the pain ebbs it's not bad at all, just the sort of feeling like the joint is bruised (which by now it may be) - but when it stops ebbing it is excruciating.
Help. :-(
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Interestingly, over the past couple of days I've noticed that my jaw hurts a lot less when I am walking somewhere than it does when I am sitting still. This could be a simple circulatory issue (I mean, it could be in my head) or it could be that when my arm is moving, as it does when I'm walking, it's not knotting up my shoulder the way it might when I sit still or lie down. (The fact that the pain recedes when I'm moving has made getting to sleep a particular challenge. What I wouldn't give for a hammock, the past couple of nights, because how do I know if it couldn't be helped by movement in space, rather than muscle movement, you know?)