Jaws and Scolio…What?

I hurt my jaw in August 2011 and only just did something about it this past Thursday.

I know what you’re thinking…it took that long for her to do something about it? The answer to that is, yes.

It was kind of funny how it happened. I was at my sister’s house talking to her (that doesn’t even sound like me, right?), and my jaw randomly made a loud popping noise. I thought that it was pretty neat, so I proceeded to do it about five more times, just to see if I could make that loud popping noise. We laughed about it, but I didn’t give it much thought.

After a few days, I started to notice that my right jaw, the very same side that had been so previously entertaining, was now starting to hurt. A lot. I talked to my doctor about it a few weeks later, and she said to come back in a month or so if it was still bothering me. I didn’t. But it has been bothering me ever since.

It’s pathetic that I’ve waited so long to get it fixed. And I am embarrassed of that. But I passed a chiropractor sign by my house last Thursday and finally pulled in. They were rather impressed that my “injury” hadn’t been giving me killer headaches. I wouldn’t put up with those for very long. My main symptoms have been that I passionately hate yawning, and I can’t eat apples because it is so painful to bite down on anything.

Really, I should have lost a ton of weight this past year from such an injury. No such luck!

I am glad that I found a really cool chiropractor. I’ve never been to one before and was scared of the whole process (which is why I waited sixteen months to actually visit one).

And it’s a good thing that he is only a mile from my house, because he found something else going on when he took x-rays for my jaw…

I have Scoliosis. I didn’t know what that was, either, but he described it as an abnormal curvature of the spine. The red line represents where a normal spine would be…and you can see what mine is doing instead.

Partay!

Oddly enough, I wasn’t too bummed with the news. Most people have some form of Scoliosis or another. Mine is pretty bad, but I haven’t been impacted by it too much. However, he prescribed numerous visits to try to make a dent, and I went for it. Additionally, he will be working on my jaw and neck, and getting those back to healthy are very important to me right now. I just want to feel better again, and I’ve started to forget what that feels like…

He wanted to do twenty-five visits, but I will only be able to do twenty-one because of work. We will take more x-rays at fifteen visits to see if any progress is being made. While he is working on getting my spine back into place a little bit, I am mostly concerned about my jaw. Luckily, he’s been working on that, too. And I have the bruises to show for it.

He wanted me to do some massages on my own over the weekend until I went back for my third visit today. My neck and jaw were so tender to the touch from what they did on Friday that I couldn’t even look at them without hurting! Needless to say, my self-massages weren’t as violent as he probably wanted.

You can say it…wimp.

In other news, he also found this. He asked if I had ever had any traumatic sports injuries or been hit on the head really hard. He asked about whiplash. I am only now thinking about the Indiana Jones ride…

It has a nice curvature on top, and then it kind of gets wonky towards the bottom. Can you see it? He says he has never seen one quite this bad (that’s a compliment in my book) and is shocked that I am not having severe pain all the time from it.

Mom…if you ever dropped me on my head, now would be the time to let me know. Besides, that would probably explain a lot in other areas as well.

In other news, you can clearly see here that my mouth is mostly fake. I’ve had lots of cavities filled, and now there is photo proof of it! Holy smokes!

This was the picture in which I was most interested. It’s my jaw. The x-ray was taken from the front so the left of the picture is actually my right (and hurting) side. Does that make sense?

He took this angle to see if things were aligned, which would help him to know how to start making adjustments. As you can see, I am not aligned at all. I wasn’t surprised any more, considering what I had seen in the other two x-rays so far.

The big line is where I am supposed to be, and the little line is where I actually am. Who knew that I was so crooked?! He is going to work on this during our visits as well.

I’ll admit that what lead me to finally stop at the chiropractor was my new symptoms over the past few months. I feel like my hurt jaw is affecting so much more, and my right ear has started to have these awesome stabbing ear aches. It has been so much fun. He found some blood deep inside that ear, so at least I know that I haven’t been making it up. I’m just glad that it will all soon be healed.

Do you have any idea how much I am missing caramels apples?

In addition to some neck and jaw adjustments each visit (he couldn’t get my jaw to pop on Friday’s visit because it was so tight from Thursday’s visit), I am getting electrical treatments that help loosen the muscles before they dig in, so to speak. It makes me feel like Frankenstein…laying on a table with electricity moving my muscles against my will. A very weird feeling! After the electricity loosens things up, they then do pressure point triggers. This is just a nice way of saying they painfully dig their fingers into my neck, back, and jaw to get things worked back into place.

I am all for it. Whatever I can do to get better, I’ll do it. I have five visits this week, and I’m not as scared as I was to go last week. I think that it will hurt in the meantime, but it will be better in the end.

That is all I want.

And I want to be able to yawn without being in severe pain. Is that too much to ask?

This is all a new experience for me. Have any of you gone through something like this?