Are you a Doctor?

I think, but I am not sure due to the the fact I am not a Doctor, that My jaw is dislocated.

Lemme tell you why.

When I had those three teeth (two wisdom and a molar) extracted, they had a lot of trouble with my bottom wisdom tooth. The tooth broke, and then was cut into eight pieces becuase the root ended up being curved around and under my jawbone.

It was quite painful as the freezing froze the tooth the gum the cheek and surrounding, but up by my ear, where the .. for lack of better word , Jaw bone joint , is it hurt like a SOB. The dentist reapplied freezing twelve times during the extraction of that one tooth, and in the end I was so desperate to get it over with I lied my butt off, told her I was fine, and just bore the pain.

There was a loud pop and finally the last piece of the tooth, the root, was out.

The first week I ignored the pain and treated it with Tylenol. Of course it is sore! I thought, Your jaw is always sore after an extraction. It made sense that it would hurt three times as much after having three teeth out!

The last few days I just assumed my jaw was stiff from not being used. I had tried very hard the first week not to move my mouth too much, becuase it hurt. And then today, sitting in the car, waiting for the kids to get out of school I started opening my mouth to the point of the pain, and then slowly past that point.

It is like my jaw on the right side is double jointed. it kind of jumped and clicked when passing a certain spot during opening and closing.

I used my fingers on the left side and felt the movement of the joint and the tendons or muscle or whatever they are, and it is a nice smooth movement. On the left, at the exact point of pain, the smooth movement is interrupted with a jump and my lower law shifts a bit to the left, then as I close, the jump is repeated, again with the pain and my jaw moves slightly back to the right, back to it's natural place.

Two things concern me about this "possible" dislocation.

Number one : If my jaw really was dislocated, Wouldn't it hurt WAY more? Yes, there is pain, last night I was caught unaware by a yawn and was unable to stop my mouth from suddenly opening to its widest and it brought me to tears, but when I open (or close) slowly, the pain is .. oh say a five on a scale of ten, ten being the worst.

Number two : Shouldn't my face up by the joint be swollen, or a the very least bruised? I was swollen very bad the first night and day but by the third day there was no trace of swelling and there was never any bruising.

In any event. I have an appointment with my dentist in a week, on the twentieth, and if it is still doing the double jointed click thing I will question her about it. I still kind of figure it just got stiff and needs a bit of stretching to get it back into shape.

'Course, stiffness doesn't explain why my lower jaw keeps jumping to the left when I open wide....