yet another

If you’ve known me for a while, you’d know that I have some pretty serious health problems all relating to stress. It’s like my body just refuses to handle anything, and so it rebels against me and throws tantrums. “But I don’t ask you to do much!” I say, while my body continues to scream and punch me. “In fact, I let you be a total lazy ass most of the time! I just need you to please, please, PLEASE do this one small thing for me!” But my body doesn’t listen, and instead tries to kill me. Us. Kill us. Whatever.

(What am I even saying?)

Anyway, I went to the dentist today. For the last three and a half years I’ve been going to the university dental clinic because it’s way cheap, I don’t have to mess with health insurance, and I get to help out the dental students by providing a willing and prone body that they can use for SCIENCE. They’ve been telling me for years now that I have these deep pockets along the grooves of my teeth, and they assumed that they were healed-over cavities. (Or something. I might not have been paying too close attention.) I thought that was crazy because I brush my teeth twice a day and floss every night, so my teeth should be Goddamn near perfect. They suggested that even though it’s a huge pain in the ass, I should start brushing my teeth after every meal.

Over the years I’ve also developed a really bad clicking jaw. I don’t know how to describe it; basically feels like somebody punched me across the face, broke my jaw, and it never quite healed right. It’s kind of swollen and painful on my right side, and if I open my jaw beyond a certain amount there is a loud clicking sound, and I can feel my jawbone grinding in this weird way. It also hurts like hell. I also get that feeling if I bite down on something with my back teeth. The weird thing is that it’s not ALWAYS this way; sometimes I can bite down really hard and not feel anything, and other days if I bite down even a little I get searing pain so severe that I can’t see for a bit. The dental students told me that that’s also a side effect of my weird cavities.

Then today I went to my Kailua dentist for the first time in like four years. I told him about the “cavities” and my jaw. He took some x-rays and told me that those deep pockets aren’t cavities, they’re cracks from clenching my teeth too hard. He also told me that my jaw bone on the right side of my face is essentially fractured; that whole “punched across the face and never quite healed right” theory is close to what really happened. Basically, I tend to clench my teeth in my sleep, and I clench so hard that the gel in between my jaw bones slipped out and dried, which means that the cushion isn’t there anymore. Then when I clench again, it’s just bone grinding against bone, and which eventually fractured and healed poorly. Now every time it gets sore again, it’s because I irritated the old wound by clenching my teeth the night before.

All of this, HAHA, is due to stress. Even the canker sores that I get on a pretty regular basis is related.

Oh yeah, and get this. You know how I brush my teeth so much? Turns out that’s a BAD thing. Turns out that I have gingivitis because I sleep with my mouth open, which breeds gingivitis no matter how well I brushed and flossed my teeth. Then during the day when I brush like 24534645 times, it irritates and inflames my gums which makes them that much easier to infect at night. HAHAHA. LIFE IS FUNNY.

And he showed me the x-rays of my face. Apparently my sinuses are RIGHT above my teeth, which is unnaturally low. In fact, my sinuses are so low that they actually push into the roots of my upper teeth. That means if I ever DO get cavities, I’m going to be at a high risk for major sinus infections.

Sometimes it’s like I just can’t get a break. You know? It’s like no matter what I do, all this stress really is killing me… except what on earth am I so stressed out about? I live at home, I barely have classes, I don’t work, I don’t need to worry about bills or anything like that, everything is pretty sweet. So what on earth causes me to clench my teeth so hard in my sleep that I crack my teeth and jaw bones?

So later I have to go back in to get fitted for TWO different mouth guards. One is to keep my jaws slightly separated so that I don’t clench. I have to wear this one when I go to bed and when I’m working, like if I’m at my computer doing homework. The other one is basically a muzzle to keep my mouth closed when I sleep so that my mouth doesn’t dry out and I don’t get gingivitis.

I’m never going to get a boyfriend. “Honey, look at this MUZZLE I have to wear at night. Isn’t it great? And look at this other contraption that keeps me from gnashing my teeth like a monster. Hey, where are you going?”