It’s Trismas Time!

I have often said that my life is a series of interesting events that make for some pretty exciting blog posts. In other words, the most random and honestly perfectly crazy things happen to me when I am going about doing very ordinary things.

Like last week for example.

I went to the dentist. It doesn’t get much more ordinary than that. Except for the reason I was there was not very ordinary… at least I would truly hope it isn’t ordinary to have 13 cavities. Yes I typed that correctly. THIRTEEN. WHYYY.

All joking aside, I really do have 13 cavities. I am trying to make myself feel better because most of them are small “spots” that could potentially turn worse so they are taking care of them early, but it is still considered a cavity on my dental record so I really am not doing myself any favors by justifying it. I CAN however blame someone else for the terrible news my dentist gave me.

“You just had a baby didn’t you?”

“Yes. Yes I did! And I didn’t come to the dentist once in that 9 month period.”

“You probably should have come,” was his reply.

“Yeaaaaahhhh… ” I thought to myself. “I know that NOW.”

Oh well we live and we learn right?

Well I learned that having a baby can do some serious damage to your teeth if you are not extra careful about taking care of them. Which I wasn’t. I was sick… hungry all the time… I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I woke up at 2 am to make myself food because I was too hungry to sleep. SO considering THAT it makes sense that I have cavities, right? I hope so because honestly this is not me.

I was always that child who walked into the dentists office all bright eyed and bushy tailed, happy as a lark. Who opened her mouth wide as the dentist exclaimed, “Perfect teeth like always!” and passed me off with a perfectly spotless bill of health. Yes that is right, I NEVER had cavities, I NEVER had braces, I ALWAYS got a toy at the end of my appointments because I was the pearly white child. I had 2 cavities once… Just ONCE though, in 21 years.

So you can imagine my surprise when the dentist told me my mouth was worth over a thousand dollars. Dollars in the dentists pocket that is! I wanted to cry. But instead I tried to make myself feel better by apologizing with complete confusion as to how this could happen to the pearly white queen, then blaming my child for my misfortune.

It honestly couldn’t get worse, could it?

That is what I thought. I mean I almost had a cavity on every tooth in my mouth, and I would have to come in 4 separate times to get the work done. This was not something I ever planned on experiencing.

Well it got worse.

I went in to have my first group of teeth corrected. He started numbing me and I would not go numb (I am used to this… I guess I have a high drug threshold). He decided to go for a second round and see if that would numb me.

ANNNDDD… IT TOTALLY DID! So that was good. But then he said, “Alright, open your mouth!”

ANNNDD… I COULDN’T! It was stuck shut. No matter how hard I tried to open it, I could not get it open more than half an inch. He massaged my jaw and told me to try again.

Nothing,

He then tried to open my mouth for me and it wouldn’t budge. “I’ll be back.” about 20 minutes later he walked back in. He proceeded to tell me that he went and contacted the oral surgeon next door to ask him if he knew what had happened to my mouth. He told me I had something that he had never seen in his 30 years of dental work but that the oral surgeon had seen a few times called trismus. This lovely little word that sounds more like a holiday than a jaw disorder basically means that my jaw somehow had locked and would be stuck for at least the next 3 days and then after that through some jaw therapy I should be able to open it again at some point in the future.

Lovely.

To make matters worse, since I couldn’t open my jaw, they were unable to do any dental work on me so I was sent home with an apology, some well wishes, a “I’ll check on you tomorrow” and a VERY VERY numb face.

I always exaggerate things and prepare for the worst case scenario due to my anxiety, so I was pretty much preparing for the worse: I would probably go home and somehow get sick to my stomach and because I couldn’t open my mouth I would asphyxiate my puke and die.

Thankfully that didn’t happen. I actually healed VERY fast. Yes I had to mash up my food and shove it in the small gap in my mouth for a couple of days. Yes I couldn’t talk much, and my jaw hurt. But I survived and I am proud to say that as of today I can open my mouth completely once again! YES.

The bad news is I still have 13 cavities, and I am now scared of numbing shots.

But I’ll tough it out.

Besides it was a good learning experience.

Oh and P.S. Ladies if you get prego,… Please eat good, and brush your teeth RELIGIOUSLY. Your teeth with thank you.