Kortney

mirn,
Yes, my right ear symptoms are pretty bad but I'm always sensitive to loud noises. Cold wind on that ear is bad for me. Heat isn't too bad. Just the cold. My pain rarely ever crosses to the left side.

I do have some bilateral spasms in front of the joints but the right side is by far the worst of it all. The only time the left side really hurts is when I manage to hit on 2 upper left molars and make them ache. That's when it gets bad on that side.

Yes, mine is a direct result of an injury. A bad car accident many years ago. I was hit basically head on at 50 mph but the right side of my body took the full impact and my seatbelt snapped, air bag failed to come out and my face/head went into my steering wheel. I remember being thrown forwards, then snapped back.

Not long after that did my pain set in fast and furious. My upper right teeth began to just ache non stop, I had severe headaches that wouldn't respond to anything. Not demerol. Not even Talwin and that's a potent narcotic for pain. I would just lay on the couch and cry because it would hurt so bad.

I went from dds to dds and finally one of them sent me to an endodontist. He discovered those teeth were all fractured. We tried RCT but they abcessed one by one and then I had them all pulled one by one.

I hated to do that because I had beautiful teeth. I never wore braces, they were straight, etc. Had a beautiful smile. I hated the pain even more though than I did to lose the teeth.

So, we pulled them. The pain eased up having them out.

I never had them replaced. I was out of money, didn't have insurance and was too ignorant to realize I could have forced insurance to cover the cost.

Over the years my bite went from a little off from extractions to what it is now. Non existant.

I had occasional pain from it and began grinding my teeth at night. Then my ear pain began. For awhile it would all sort of wax and wane but would ease up after a couple of days of NSAID's, soft, soft diet, and ice packs.

Right before thanksgiving of this year it came back. It was a searing pain in my right lower jaw that radiated everywhere. It hasn't stopped since that day. Before that began I was getting some muscle spasms in my jaw, bad ones. Jaw jerk type spasms and severe pressure type headache.

I went to bed on a Saturday night and on a sunday morning it all blew up on me. It hasn't changed since or stopped.

I've lost 15 pounds I didn't need to lose. I can't eat very much. I don't sleep well if at all. The little bit of sleep I do get is a deep medicated sleep. I am on Neurontin for pain. It does help with the migraines and nerve related type pain but when it kicks in at night it knocks me out hard. It has some unpleasant side effects for me personally when I go above a certain doseage. Right now I can tolerate the side effects at 900 mg's. Higher than that and I'm dumber than a box of rocks. And I get ataxia meaning I walk like a drunk. So I'm better off at this dose.

3 oral surgeons wanted to operate. I said no way. Finally got to another OS who said he would never operate on TMJ's unless he's called to the ER to see someone with a badly broken jaw, etc. We know my right joint is displaced. It's obvious on all the xrays, etc. But he said surgery will only make me worse in the long run and he doesn't want to do that to me.

I appreciated his honesty. How to fix this is anyone's guess at this point.

Splints just haven't helped me at all unless I'm in the wrong type of splint.

Years ago we tried soft splints over my bottom teeth, didn't work. Tried soft ones over the top, I shredded that in a week from grinding.

The last one was hard acrylic but was painful and made me worse.

I can tell you this though, stick around here long enough and you will learn more than you can imagine.