My Back Story: Part 1

I've had jaw and bite issues for most of my life that I can remember. When I was 10, my jaw started giving me limited range of motion and even locking completely shut at times. My mom eventually took me to the dentist, who referred me to a TMJ specialist. Once there, they discovered discrepancies between my left and right jaw joints. It was such a long time ago and I was so young that I can't recall many details of what shape my jaw was actually in. I do remember the doctor saying that I was a great candidate for surgery (most likely because of my skeletal malformation), but that it wouldn't be a good idea until my jaw had fully grown. This comment stands out because as a 11-ish year old, I thought surgery sounded kind of cool (ohh youthful ignorance, how I miss it). They created a bite splint for me to relieve the pressure and stress off my jaw that I had to wear 24/7. By this point, I was in 6th grade, so the massively thick splint I had to wear over my TOP teeth that was DARK PURPLE (why?!) wasn't exactly great for my already fragile, awkward 12 year old confidence.

I continued to wear the splint and alternated the top splint with bottom braces and a new bottom splint with top braces. Once the braces were ready to come off several years later, they discontinued the splint at the same time. I vividly remember the relief that came from having a mouth free from all that metal and plastic and loving my long-fought-for closed bite (my bite had been wiiide open only touching on one tooth on one side since my jaw issues had started). However, it was only a few weeks after removing my braces and rubber bands that my bite opened back up completely again. I was disappointed just because it made eating harder, but I really didn't think about it much again after that.

As I progressed in my teenage years into my early 20's, I experienced frequent, chronic tension headaches. It was annoying and at times frustrating, but they weren't daily or severe enough to make me seek help outside of taking way too much Advil and Tylenol. I definitely noticed a lot of the symptoms caused by my bad bite (loud ringing in my ears, lots of floaters in my eyes, trouble swallowing and eating easily, etc), but since I'd never really known anything different, it just becomes a part of life. It was in my mid-20's that my TMJ got really out of control...