Friday, June 19, 2009

The jaw bone's connected to the head bone . . .

Fifteen years ago one of my sibs warned me about "the Jansen Jaw" and the pain it might cause me in the future. Looking around online, I believe my family is part of a much, much larger crowd.
My first thought, when I woke with the pain on Tuesday morning, was that maybe I've been clenching the muscles in my jaw and had knocked it out of alignment. I've had times when I had to do a self adjustment and eliminated the pain immediately. Not this time - this time I ended up irritating the heck out of my jaw joint. Hmmm, how would my Wednesday dentist appointment go?
I don't know if it had to do with dealing with the pain all day or what, but I fell asleep 2 hours earlier than usual on Tuesday night. I took some ibuprofen and went to the dentist. My hygienist suggested this was a result of too much chewing on ??
"Oh! I bet it was those beef ribs!"
"That would do it.", she replied and suggested I continue with the ibuprofen and moist heat (thank goodness for damp towels in the microwave).
The ribs weren't tough, but with my right arm in a cast, my eating style has changed. I'm sure the stress on the old jaw came from tackling too big of a bite.
And so now I'm babying it as much as possible, because at 7 AM on Monday I have a 2 hour dentist appointment. {sigh}
If nothing else, this will give me a chance to eat less . . .

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