I Need Help: Fibromyalgia-TMJ

It’s a pain like no other, hard to describe, impossible to treat, at least for me. Falling under the Fibromyalgia umbrella, TMJ is like lightning striking your ear and jaw straight through your brain and head. It kept me up all night; no pain-killer helped it, no heating pad, ice, soft foods.

The pain shoots, there is no warming and no treatment that helps; I didn’t eat any hard foods yesterday. My jaw usually pops and goes back into its socket; I live with that. I was a bit worried about the Presidential election but not enough to be awakened all through the night in utter agony as if I had been shocked by electrical wires, moaning and groaning all night long. I was restless, weary and I hurt so badly; I toss and turn to see if lying a different way will help. Nothing works.

Even though I have had Fibromyalgia for years, the varied symptoms (maybe because of the cold weather?) are worse now. I wish I could scream out loud and get it all out of my system but I can barely open my mouth. I try not to speak, to hold my lips a certain way; I pretend I am a model who is posing for a sculptor who is doing an impression of me in burnt-red clay. I can’t move my lips or my mouth for him to get the correct shape so I try to relax my mouth, my muscles until I find a single spot that doesn’t make me cry out loud. I try desperately to hold that same place so I don’t scream; I am just asking for tolerable not even for feeling good.

I have dealt with many of the other symptoms of Fibromyalglia in an accepting way as possible but nothing has been as urgently painful as this. I’ve been to ENT’s (Ear, Nose and Throat Specialists) convinced I have had flaming ear infections until the diagnosis was always the same. TMJ.  Now, I no longer go to the doctor, I know what it is and I huddle under blankets, drink liquids through a pink striped straw and pray for the pain to subside.

Those of us with this chronic pain disease have so many different symptoms, yet there is usually one or two that affect us the most. This is one of them for me. Pain, out of nowhere, unexpected, usually starting in the middle of the night and continuing as long it takes. I’ve tried the mouth guards (sort of), I’ve tried heating pads, I’ve tried deep breathing and meditating. TMJ lurks in the quiet of my brain and body and jumps out of the darkness to scare me with its razor-sharp accuracy. It attacks with no warning, no signals. Unlike migraines, there are no warning signs. This, I find hard to deal with, hard to surrender to so much pain for however long it decides to stay. For once, i am helpless in this situation, I feel disempowered and small, the pain has caught up to me and it is winning.

If I Had One Hour in a Time Machine… (Plinky Prompt)

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Looking Back, Way Back

I would head back to my childhood, to my past. Life was simple, four best friends played together every afternoon and our only choice to make was what type of ice cream cone we would buy. Everything seemed perfect back then. Our moms were all near-by but in my time machine, the dads would be there too, all of them being kind and supportive. There was no problem back then without a solution. If you skinned your knee, someone would have a band-aid. We celebrated our youngest friend’s effort to ride a 2-wheeler; her blond hair wispy around her little face. I still see that image in my mind today. We were on the street corner across from Gussie’s candy and ice cream store. We skateboarded and roller-skated, played hand ball or jumped rope or hopped our way through hopscotch. “The Moms” would talk happily and if they were complaining about anything, we never knew. When it was time for dinner, we would all head back to our own apartments. Claudine and Roger in one building, Glen and I in another. We all ate dinner, usually at someone else’s house. When woke up in the morning, we headed to school together and knew that at 3:00pm, we would be right back where we were the day before. Together.