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| Neck And Jaw Pain |
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Question:
Any experience w/jaw pain that's very severe?
It's been 10 days now, came on rather suddenly and i thought it was a
toothache, but the dentist x-rayed them and the teeth in that area of pain are
fine.
I do have arthritis in my neck, cervical radiculopathy, and am getting over a
frozen shoulder, all of these on the left side.
The jaw pain is also on the left, and one doc said it's probably TMJ, while
the dentist said it doesn't seem to be, and could be related to my cervical
problems. Another doc said it's probably TMJ
but is running a "sedimentation" blood test to see if it's trigeminal
neuralgia. It responds to 400mg Lodine for 2-4 hrs then the pain comes back.
I also use Flexeril to help me sleep.
The pain is horrible, what do i do? I can tolerate small doses of vicodin but
it doesn't help much, and the Talwin the dentist prescribed made me so dizzy i
couldn't walk (and the pain was still there).
Answer:
I have TMJ problems, but mine are of a muscular nature rather than any
apparent deterioration in the joint itself. I've had real troubles with my
neck from my hypermobility and problems with lots of muscle cramping in my
neck and upper back from fibro. I've noticed that both of those really
affect the pain levels in my jaw. I also realized that when I was getting
regular massages and when I was in PT for my neck, my jaw would always
release and ease when they worked on the muscles of the neck.
I finally
asked about it at PT once and she said all the muscles around there are
interconnected and it made sense that the jaw would release then. Since
then, whenever my jaw starts to ache a lot, stretching out my neck and
shoulders is one of the first things I do.
All of this is to say that with your mix of problems on the left side, I
think your jaw pain might very well be connected to all the rest of this,
based on my experience. My inclination would be to recommend seeing your doc
and asking for a PT referral to work on the whole neck and shoulder area.
I'd suggest massage, but I fear that would be a very painful experience with
your recovering frozen shoulder. you might try gently massaging the neck and
shoulder on that side as much as you can tolerate and see if it eases it any
in the meantime.
I'd also ask your doctor to do an MRI or at least a bone scan to rule
out osteonecrosis of the jaw, especially if you've recently been treated
with bisphosphonate drugs for osteoporosis (particularly IV infusion of
one of this class of drugs, the name of the drug escapes me at the
moment). As far as I know the dental x-rays would show an abcess in a
tooth root or the jaw bone, but you might want to confirm with this with
your dentist, as this can be the cause of some pretty terrible jaw pain.
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