PLEASE HELP!!! Therabite-type devices???

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone!

I've had pretty severe TMJ (on both sides) for eleven years now (it

started when I was only 15!) It used to be so bad, I'd be in

constant pain every waking moment of the day, whether I was even

moving my jaw or not, and experienced a severe loss of range of

motion. (I will say that one benefit of the experience is that I'm

now extremely tolerant to pain - I barely even took any painkillers

after my surgeries.)

I was blown off by my PCP and insurance company for 9 of those years,

and finally went and found my own specialist about 2 years ago. By

then, the damage to my joint was so great that I've had to have a

total of four surgeries (one upper orthognathic, and three joint

surgeries, including removal of the obliterated cartilage on both

sides) so far just to be pain-free and gain some motion back to the

joint. At my worst point, I could only open about 5 millimeters.

I'm doing much better now, and have been using a Therabite for the

past 6-8 months to counteract the years of muscle-shortening I went

through. The only problem is that the device stretches to a maximum

of only 3 and a half centimeters, and I reached this max about a

month ago. I asked my surgeon if he had anything else that could

stretch it even further, and he told me to use my fingers. However,

since my muscles are still so tight, this REALLY hurts my fingers.

I'd like to find a device other than stacked tongue depressors!!!

If anybody knows of a device that can stretch my jaw further than 3.5

centimeters, PLEASE let me know!!!!! So many messages get posted in

this forum, I'd really appreciate it if you could send me a message

at:

tomorryo@...

so I won't have to sift through the message archive!

Thank you!!! )