Chasing possibility

Guess who has some potential good news about getting their jaws pried apart? Me. After waiting three weeks to get an appointment with the original ENT who did my surgery, and then waiting an hour and a half past my appointment time to see him today, we talked to him about options to do something about the horrible trismus – going on over seven years now. The beauty of having been operated on by the most respected and senior fellow in his department at that hospital: the ability to be walked personally, by him, up a floor to talk to the surgeons there, and be put into the hands of another maxillofacial surgeon who took about three minutes to suggest a surgery I’d read about some time ago, but which everyone else seemed to think was probably not worth doing: coronoidectomy. He couldn’t guarantee this would solve the problem, of course. But at this point, having an oral opening down to 12mm, which is 2mm lost in the past year alone, I’m willing to try anything – even though it means being intubated through the nose and more PT afterward to keep working on getting back to some semblance of normal (and hopefully wide enough to get teeth in, given the rate at which they’re crumbling under the aftereffects of the radiation). So, they’ve put it in with their scheduler, who will call us with some dates and we’ll go do this thing to see if it will help. No one looks forward to surgery, but I am, as they say, cautiously optimistic.

2 thoughts on “Chasing possibility”

  1. Thanks, Bobbi! I set up a FB app on my phone, and I’m convincing my mom to post updates tomorrow just because I think that will be hilarious.

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