TMJ Friends

On one hand, not much has happened over the past couple weeks. I don’t have a surgery date yet, and hell, I’m not even sure that I have surgeon. Doing this surgery right the first time is one of the most important things about it all. The best complication, if you could call it that, would be having to redo the surgery. The worst complication, well, that’s something that I don’t think I have to expand on. People always say that TMJ disorder isn’t live threatening when in fact, that isn’t true at all.

In the past, I’ve had physicans who have completely disregarded my imaging and treated me like someone who has just been diagnosed. This week, for whatever reason, I decided to go back to my original surgeon to ask him some questions about my imaging and my pending surgery. When he read the CT scan report, he immediately knew that it wasn’t necessary or helpful to examine me at all. He didn’t even ask me to open my mouth to see how small my opening was.

He explained to me that this surgery needs to be done as soon as possible, because the longer I wait, the more degenerative changes can happen, and it puts me at risk for things like exposed nerves.. which just the thought of, makes me sick to my stomach.

He did tell me that he was proud of how I was dealing with it all, and that I have a good tolerance for pain. He always knows when I’m down and just what to say to make me walk out feeling better. That is the type of surgeon I want.

I’ll continue to update here as things happen, particularly over the next couple weeks as things will probably be changing a lot.