Guest guest Posted April 30, 2005 Report Share Posted April 30, 2005 Hi everyone, I haven't been here in a while. I've been working a lot of extra shifts to make up for the time I was supposed to have off post-op. I was scheduled for upper jaw surgery (surgery #6) on May 11 to correct the open bite that remained after my TMJ joint reconstruction. Well, I started having increased pain in my joints about a month ago which I tried to tell myself was stress about the upcoming surgery and work. Then last week, my bite started to open up even more. Within days, my open bite went from 5 mm to 7 mm and is getting bigger every day. Last Tuesday, I went for my pre-op appointment and my surgeon took one look at my bite and cancelled the surgery. X-rays confirmed my worst fears. All the new bone that had been created using distraction to reconstruct the condyles is gone. The arthritis has come back and is causing the bone in my lower jaw to rapidly deteriorate. There's no other option now but artificial joints. I knew I would probably need them eventually but we all thought that would be years from now. It came as a big shock for me at first. Now, I'm kind of relieved because there won't be any bone left to disintegrate. Artificial joints only last 5-15 years but even 5 years without jaw surgery sounds good to me at this point. My surgeon is putting a rush order on the custom made joints so we can do this as soon as possible. We're trying for a surgery date in early June. After a year of being able to eat a soft diet, it's back to a liquid/non-chew diet for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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