The Jaw Horror, Part 2

After a year and half of no problems, you would think that everything is fine and there is no need to worry...wrong! In 2009, after another seizure at air cadets, my jaw dislocated and this was the start of an agonising three years! I went home and my mum thought that if we put ice on it, the swelling would go down and hopefully it would relocate, but after a painful 12 hours, there was no change. Even though I was 17, we contacted Alder Hey as they had my past history, and they told us to go to the clinic to get seen. They doctor used local anaesthetic in the joints and force to relocate the joint, and even though this was a painful procedure, I felt much better once the joint was back in place.
My jaw dislocated a couple more times and we went back to the same doctor who relocated the jaw each time, but I was referred to Aintree Hospital to see a specialist as I was now too old for Alder Hey. From September 2009 to approximately November, my jaw dislocated over 20 times, and this meant going to Whiston A&E and either using gas and air to get the jaw back in, or being sedated with a variety of medicines in resus so that the doctors could get the jaw back in place.

There came a point where the doctors tried to bandage my head up tightly to try and prevent my jaw coming out of place. I had to eat mush through a straw and also go into college with my head in bandages in an attempt to keep everything in place...

This didn't work, and I just looked like a fool for several weeks! After meeting my consultant; Mr Dodd, he asked for an MRI scan of the jaw joints and recommended arthrocentesis (washing out the jaw joint), so I agreed but this looked like there wasn't going to be a "quick fix". As my jaw was still causing so much trouble, I was admitted to Aintree Hospital because Whiston A&E couldn't relocate the jaw like usual, and I was took into theatre so that they could fit "buttons", which have the same effect as arch bars but aren't as noticable. However, these failed to work as the elastics continued to snap everytime my jaw dislocated so they were removed at a later date. In January 2010, a date was set to have an eminectomy (which is the removal of the articular eminence so the ball of the joint no longer gets stuck in front of it). The date was the 9th April, which meant that I still had a gruelling 3 months to live with this painful problem!