Understanding TMJ The Fun Way!

What happened? You might say. Where have you been? What is going on? It would be great if I could just list those things that have transpired, bullet-point style, and then go get a bagel to eat, but I can’t do that. You’ve likely waited a month to hear the details, so hear the details you shall.
Last we spoke, I was gearing up to make the drive from Denver to Scottsdale, a drive that is 880 miles and usually takes between twelve and fourteen hours. I had excitedly packed a very large cooler filled with snacks (*or as my longlost friend Nathan would have called it, High School Lunch) and had recently purchased new and exciting music on my Ipod. Some people shudder at the possibility of sitting in a car for 12 hours, adjusting cruise control and singing off-key. I somewhat relish that time as a time for thought, for reflection, for making mental to-do lists that sound grandiose but plausible while I’m sitting still and doing nothing productive.
And then I had another thought. My jaw hurts. Why does my jaw hurt? I can still move it side to side, but when I close it, wow, that really hurts. Huh. I looked into the mirror and noticed my smile had moved to the left, and while moving to the left is something we as Americans could do to ensure that we don’t accidentally elect a hockey mom into the White House, moving to the left was something I was sure wasn’t supposed to happen independently to parts of my face.
It was, however, entertaining to work on my Milo Ventimiglia impersonation from Albuquerque to just outside Gallup, New Mexico. And then it REALLY started to hurt. I have the same arrogant nature that most men do when tools or injuries are in question, and it is with that nature that I opened my mouth as wide as it would go and then gripped the lower half of my jaw like a football facemask and pulled it to the right.
After which I probably should have pulled over. My eyes filled with water in that same delightful way they do when manicuring one’s nose hairs. From my cooler I grab a frozen Gatorade and apply it to my face, put the hammer down and speed towards Scottsdale. The frozen Gatorade was at the bottom of my treasure trove of treats including crackers, apples, and a slightly frozen snickers bar that was to be my joyous reward for making the journey.
Let’s move forward a few days. I had been drinking only protein shakes and Odwalla Juice Smoothies for three days and still couldn’t get my molars to line up. I’d repeated my idiot male-fix-it routine in the shower after allowing hot water to “loosen the muscles” of my face before once again wrenching it right. It should also be known that I had made the drive in one day in order to arrive in Scottsdale in time for a shift at the restaurant. My newly cockeyed smile and knowledge of food and wine hadn’t left in a summer away, but I was beginning to get tired of drinking my breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. I also ate close to my weight in mashed potatos – more on that in a moment.
Why? Why haven’t you gone to the ER? To the Doctor? To anyone? Ahh. Right. When I left Maui in 2007 I also left full medical coverage and have not enjoyed that luxury from June 2007 to August of 2008. On my first day back in Scottsdale, I called, registered and paid for a brand new insurance plan that would be delivered to my door in a matter of days. I would then fake a bar fight, and go to the ER, jaw akimbo, and receive medical attention. In the meantime, I figured I’d be able to see my friend Rae Mie who is a chiropractor and she’d be able to get me back into working order. I also still possessed a prescription for muscle relaxers from a miscommunication with my doctor in Maui. I would wait it out, get insured, get fixed, eat a Snickers.
When my jaw was a full inch to the left and the muscles in my face spasmed most of each day, I grabbed a handful of credit cards and went to a specialist who charged me a fee well over the blue book for my car, injected my face with eight doses of long-acting cortisol and something else that did something else, took molds of my newly re-aligned face, handed me three prescriptions for vicodin, anti-inflammatories, and more muscle relaxers. He also detailed that I would be on a liquid diet, with some soft foods, until further notice. TMJ related Jaw dislocation.
So there’s that. I’m almost back to solid food.
In trying to re-align my writing world with my house in Scottsdale I installed a wireless network. The only problem with the network is that every time my computer correctly realizes it has found the network I am intending it to find, it “dumps all physical memory” which is easily the scariest thing your computer can tell you. In trying to back up my ENTIRE writing career, I also find that my computer has a broken USB port that will not allow it to operate a large backup storage device that I’ve recently purchased at CostCo.
Fine.
While buying the now ineffective unit at CostCo, my debit card is declined. I call the bank to discover they’ve put a red flag hold on my account due to the fact that someone has recently attempted to use the number to buy things over the phone. Ahh. Really?
Cancel the card. Use another card to buy the soon-to-be ineffective storage device. All the while, and it is important to add this layer, I’m broke. Broke broke. My summer of excitement and writing and such was overextended by several thousand dollars. My plan (the one that I had decided upon while driving by myself, pre-jaw problem, enjoying an apple and the scenery of summertime on Raton Pass) was to get my writing back on track, work a hundred shifts at the restaurant to begin killing debt, and be debt free by the new year. It could still happen, I would tell myself. I just can’t have anything else go wrong.
And then my car died. On a morning I needed to be at work. And it didn’t die in one of those hopeful and cinematic deaths where a billow of smoke comes from under the hood and you know that a great automotive soldier has breathed their last. It just sat there. The radio came on, I turned the key, the radio turned off.
I won’t go further into this because things are shaping up. The car was an easy fix. My family has sponspored my teeth and jaw to the point that I feel I should show advertisements for them on my cheeks. The lowest that things went during the soft-food regime was the power-blending of a double quarter pounder into what looked like beige cous-cous. I have been scheduled the million restaurant shifts I was hoping for and will keep working them despite the temperature being a little too warm and the nation’s economy moving into a realm where people don’t dine out anymore. . . no, we won’t worry about that issue. We don’t worry about the gaining popularity of Old Man and Little Girl. We don’t worry that Cracker Jacks will never grace these lips that have loved it for so long. We don’t worry that 208,000 miles is a lot for a ’95 Ford. We don’t worry that I am suddenly a 28 year old person with retainers. And we certainly won’t worry that I’m all done writing to you. I’m off to have a protein shake. Aloha.