take better care of my teeth

I finally finished the repair work and had a new bite plate made to help prevent damage from clenching. I’m feeling really good about the whole thing and the next thing I know, I’ve got two separate back teeth with corners broken off and my head spinning, trying to figure out what went wrong.

Then I woke up with my jaw in an unusual clenched position and realized that on the right side, my teeth are actually able to touch when my bite plate is in! Apparently, the high places are what broke off and now I have to go back and add to my already outrageous bill of over $3K to get things fixed.

I’ve known that I’m hypermobile in many joints, including my jaw-which contributes to my TMJ and the $3K bill for that matter, but I didn’t think it would skew the way my teeth met. Back to the dentist! Ugh!

I’m on another series of antibiotics because the swelling/abscess is back doing damage. Also, I think there might still be something embedded in the gumline on the other side, because chewing on that side causes some seriously crazy pain. The meds are already making progress so it’s not painful to eat, although there’s still swelling. So I’m thankful for that. It’ll just take time.

Hoping I was close to being done with dental work for a while, I got some swelling in my gums on the right side and some new pain on the left. Two weeks ago, the dentist thought the swelling might have been from food that was stuck or something. So, what’s really going on?

Turns out that during some repair two weeks ago, tiny parts of the tooth chipped off and imbedded into my gum. Man that hurts! Even more so, it hurts having those chips plucked out. The swelling? Yeah, that really was the start of an abscessed tooth and today I had to have a root canal. I think I’ve had enough, thank you very much. At least until the next time. For crying out loud.

I’ve got TMJ and have broken a number of teeth, or cracked them and then caused enough trouble to need at least five root canals. Ugh! My jaw is hypermobile and slides all over the place, causing it’s own pain. I don’t need more pain from tooth decay. I’m seeing the dentist tomorrow to have more work done, but I’ve got swelling and tenderness left over from the last work I had done two weeks ago. We’ll see how things go after tomorrow’s appointment.