Jaws

A few weeks ago I had a procedure to "irrigate my jaw" at Emory. I've been having TMJ pain since February and it hurts to eat or talk or yawn. Like a koala, eating, talking, and yawning are pretty much how I spend my entire day so this felt like a big deal to me. 

Let me rewind. My office has this big annual Mardi Gras fundraiser which I'm sort of in charge of. It brings in about $10,000 for our agency each year so it's a high pressure night. You may remember this post, which references it. About two weeks before Mardi Gras my jaw started hurting something fierce. I went to my dentist who thought it was stress related night grinding that was causing the TMJ pain. He adjusted my splint which I do not wear at all, ever, and told me to wear it. Done. It didn't help. So he adjusted it again. No better. Four times in two weeks I went to the dentist. He took x-rays, realigned my bite, adjusted my splint. No help. He threw his hands up, perplexed, and referred me to an oral surgeon. 

The oral surgeon looked at my x-rays and sent me for an MRI. I got a sitter. I scheduled an MRI. I laid still in a coffin with piped in jackhammering for 45 minutes while they fancy laser photographed my head. I got a phone call that they forgot some shots and we'd have to do it again. I got a sitter. I scheduled an MRI. I laid still in a coffin with piped in jackhammering for 45 minutes while they fancy laser photographed my head. Again. 

I went back to the oral surgeon. He told me my discs were out in my TMJ joint on both sides. The oral surgeon, who has the words "oral" and "surgeon" right in his name said "I think you should go to Emory and talk to them about oral surgery." He gets paid the big bucks for that. 

I drove an hour and a half to Emory. I waited an hour and a half to see the doctor. I was getting frustrated with all the waiting and I was all caught up on Draw Something when the doctor came in. He was generally unimpressive until he spoke. He was Australian. I love people with accents more than I love black people, so suffice it to say I was impressed. He talked to me for a long time about the pain in my "jarw." I swear to you I had to fight to listen to what he was saying because I was so busy trying to remember how he was pronouncing things. My face said "I'm listening, I understand" but my brain was saying "jarw. jarw. jarw. heeheehee." He said my MRI was "taribble; ACTshually one of the wurst" he'd seen. He told me to "avoiyid chewing or biting hod foods, proloonged tawlkng and kis-sing." My TMJ had nothing to do with the fact that I was drooling: I was in love. In my language-lust stupor I impulsively signed up for a surgical procedure. Oh, and an investigational study with experimental drugs. I drove an hour and a half back home. 

So I went earlier this month to have my jaw irrigated. They take a large needle and inject it into your jaw, lubricate it, add the investigational drug or placebo, and hope that it wiggles your disc back into place, alleviating the pain in your "jarw." The success rate is 50-60%. Thankfully you are put under for this. The nurses tried three times to IV me but my veins kept collapsing. They said they were going to take me in the exam room and give me nitrous oxide to help plump the veins.

I'd never had laughing gas but I LOVED it. Some people think things are funny when they have it. I thought I was hilarious. I was cracking jokes left and right, talking to the nurses and doctors, and picking on a certain Emory resident who was all like "I'm a doctor at Emory and I'm a hot shot, and I use my status to pick up chicks in bars."

 In the exam room the doctor walks in, ready to perform the procedure. They mentioned that I hadn't had an IV. "How many times have they stuck you?" he asks, all Australian like. Hot Shot Resident interrupted to say "just three" as though Emory is in the business of taking 10 attempts at IVing people. Then, Dr. Aussie turned into a medical Gordon Ramsey. "JOST THREE?!" He screamed. Oh, I liked him even better. He turned to a nurse and said "get me a wawm towel, please." She told him they didn't have any warm ones. He said "It's cuwld a microwave! Wet it, wawm it, please!" She complied. Then Dr. Aussie took my arm in his lap and IVed me himself. I said ouch out loud, but it was far away and way too late. He told me I was feeling the medicaytion, I asked him how he knew. "You sound lyke you've hod three shots of whis-kay" he said. 

When I came to, I was in the recovery room. My mom was there and she reported the first thing I said was "that doctor is not as cute as he thinks he is." Yikes! Dr. Aussie walked by and waved. "Yoo said some great stuff in theya" he said as he walked by. NO!

My mom, kind and compassionate as she is, took this opportunity to take blackmail pictures of me in my vulnerable state, where I am apparently pretending to be a robot. Talk about not being as cute as they think they are:

And is my jarw all better now? Nope! I feel some improvement but I think I'm going to have to go back. And next time I'm brushing my hair. 

Beach. Bum.

 

A few weeks ago we went with The Husband's family to the beach. Six adults. Two one year olds. Two three year olds. In one house.  I only thought I'd experienced chaos before this. Do you remember the monkeys' wild spree of destruction in Jumanji? That was us.  I suddenly knew what it'd be like to have two sets of twins. We determined that we may never get to relax on vacation again, or at least not for the next ten years. Here is a picture of the inside of our beach house after we'd been there 10 minutes.

The babies have just discovered volume. They particularly enjoyed screeching and squealing loudly at high pitches in response to one another.  At one point my sister-in-law said she felt like we were guests in a bird sanctuary. More like prisoners. Here they are having corn in a wagon, looking like a sweet little summer post card:

 

But most of the time it looked more like this: 

 One pulling and/or pushing, while the other spills something.

Family pictures on the beach were the best. We got everyone awake at the same time, moderately clean and in coordinated dress, and even within the same vicinity on the beach. That in itself was an effort of military proportion. Of course we could not guarantee that they'd actually be happy on top of all of that so some of the shots ended up like this:

 

We also ended up with several shots of the children looking at the camera, but adults wagging fingers and making threatening faces at them. In the end my favorite picture of the week turned out to be the impromptu, naked, wearing daddy's hat on the beach shot. I'm thinking this will be one for his senior yearbook.