Lock Jaw

Those that witnessed my horrifying first experience back in 9th grade of getting my jaw locked open at a birthday party, can now laugh at that experience and the fact that it happened again. Luckily I hadn't had an episode in the seven years since then but had to have an emergency visit at four in the morning a month ago from its return. Never heard of lock jaw? Neither had I the first time it happened.

In 9th grade I was at a friend's birthday party that was supposed to be a sleepover. We were on her coach taking funny pictures and I decided it would be funny to hang upside down with my mouth wide open. We took the picture, and when I stood up I felt a pop and then I realized my mouth was stuck where it was. I tried grumbling, "I can't close my mouth" which when your mouth is stuck open, is pretty hard to understand. I ran to the bathroom and stared in horror thinking my mouth would never close again. My friends all took pictures and recorded videos as a neighborhood dentist came over at 9:00pm to try to push my mouth closed. He couldn't do it even after being instructed over the phone by an oral surgeon on how to accomplish it. My parents came and picked me up and drove me at 10pm to an oral surgeon 35 minutes away. After much slobbering and hours of my mouth being open, the oral surgeon put his thumbs in my mouth and with a lot of downward pressure, he pushed and rolled my jaw shut.

After this happened I had always been a bit carful of opening my mouth too wide and after 7 years I guess I got a little careless. A month ago I got up to a routine bathroom break at 4am and layed back down in bed. Instead of a cool story like last time, all I did was yawn wide, and there my mouth stayed. I sat up in bed and just said an "Oh no." which woke my husband up. I turned the light on and he stared at my mouth stuck open. He felt the place on my jaw where it was locked and kind of sticking out and when I told him to try and roll my mouth shut he began to sweat, get dizzy, and feel like he was going to throw up. All because of a jaw!! I'm a bit worried now about how he is going to react when I go into labor. I'll probably be driving myself to the hospital asking him "how are you doing honey" as he's laying in the back seat passed out. Haha let's hope that doesn't happen! We went to the emergency room, not knowing where else to go at 4 am. Casey had to answer the questions for me when checking in but he didn't know my social security number and I had to try my best to prununciate the numbers so she could understand. They pumped me with some morphine ( I absolutely hate that stuff I don't know how people can get addicted to it) and then he rolled my jaw shut again. Hopefully this isn't a reaccuring thing because if it happens more and more often, surgery is needed to correct it. Here's to hoping it never happens again! Now you can laugh at my pictures of my mouth stuck open.



Hey nobody looks good at 4am with their mouths open.



Seriously, again?