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I can't tell you how positively validating it has been to find out I've made it through the last 40 years with a dislocated jaw. I could go on about falling through all the doctor cracks all this time, or I could sing the praises of hands on physical therapy being the definitive voice in healing. Really thrilled I'm grinding through this getting the rest of my life back.
Notes from my last visit.
Visits 8 of 18
Medical Diagnosis:
Sorry about that formatting, quick paste sometimes destroys webkit.
Assessing me has significantly expanded to include interactive team rethinking treatment, I think we're slowing down a little because it's been so overwhelming. Once the nerve bundle was released per work on the muscle between my inner jaw and hyoid bone (supports tongue), not only did my face actually change shape, the resulting slow-mo 'throb' through that nerve bundle slam hurled me through a week of wtf level of shock, almost as if I were feeling that car accident all over again. The pain level was ginormous, which was glorious since I'm so experienced with nerve healing. My personal assessing from one side of my face to the other is still faulty and off kilter, much of what I think I feel is a disproportionate feedback from part of the nerve going down right side being fairly numb and left side feeling like ALLTHEPAIN, which is erroneous as we're finding out I assess rougher on the right side for PT work. So lowering pain on the left (the side with the nasty charlie horse inside my jaw) and opening up pain on the right is a real trip. This is affecting fibro flaring clear down my shoulders to collarbone and mid back. The headaches have been interesting.
How my neck didn't snap in half in that wreck still blows me away. I probably wrote a little detail somewhere in years past, but here's a brief synopsis. I was only doing 40 mph behind another car on my way to church with my youngest sister beside me. I was still a new driver at 19 because my parents didn't support me getting licensed during high school. I decided to pass that car in an unmarked dip and was beside it when another car popped over the crest in front of me. I immediately took my car (volkswagen) off the road to the left and let it through, then yanked back onto the highway, just missing a mailbox. Oversteering sent my front wheels into a hard flipflop back and forth pattern, making it impossible to grab the steering wheel because it was also whipping back and forth really hard. I glanced up at the driver I was still beside and the look on his face was absolute fear. Without hesitation I thought, "God, You take it. I'm sorry I killed my sister" and I grabbed the steering wheel and yanked as hard as I could to the left and let go.
The rest of that was like being wrapped in bubble wrap and cotton. I was conscious through it all, and as the car went off the road it went airborne from a ditch, flew through the air between 2 trees with barely room at all to spare while it started to flip, and hit on the windshield. If it had been the bumper or one of the trees it would have killed us. Everything was timeless and I watched in wonder at the beauty of the windshield slow time shattering into the most beautiful blue rocks of glass, almost like I got a vision of heaven behind it or something. I felt nothing and heard nothing, just watched. And then very quickly, as the car was spinning on its roof while still continuing another flip, I was crashed out the driver's side window and almost gently deposited onto the grass with the left side of my face on the ground and the car spinning on its roof right at me. My neck was hyperflexed with my right ear on my shoulder, and the rest of my body flew over me, slammed the ground hard on my left side and pulled my head with it out of the way just before that roof would have ground my head to hamburger. I slid hard into a wild rose bush as the car continued to flip away.
They later found the steering wheel impossibly bent up from the bottom where my right thigh had hit hard while I was going out the window. A muscle in my thigh was shattered but the bone never broke. Not one single bone broke in all that, but I've lived with soft tissue deeply shredded all over my body ever since. I'm literally a walking scar. The odd part was my skin stayed intact. I had no open wounds anywhere on me, all my blood from internal bleeding stayed inside of me. I was bright purple like grape juice from my right knee up to my hip from that muscle shattering. I also picked wild rose thorns out all over me for a long time. I had a tiny lump in my forehead since the wreck that I wondered might be a teensy rock that got wham jammed into my head when I first came out of the car, but no one's ever said anything on xrays later for other things. Lately it has suddenly turned into a hard tiny tag of scar tissue sticking out like a little bitty dried up wart or something that I might have removed now. The lump underneath is gone, which is weird because it was there for 40 years. Funny that it's timed with getting this work done on my jaw, neck, and throat.
That was the most perfectly choreographed accident imaginable, and I'm still alive to tell you guys God doesn't require anything of you before you ask for any kind of help. Just be honest. Be real. There is nothing God and the universe around you can't rearrange for you when you honestly accept the fact that everything in your existence boils down to you and God, or whatever you call Source. I was heard. Keep in mind that you might have prearranged going through certain events in certain circumstances for personal reasons, like faster spiritual growth or learning specific things.
When people arrived to me right after that wreck, my first words were "Go find my sister." She wound up in the back of the car with the back seat somehow miraculously turned around backward over her, protecting her from all the glass and keeping her from flying out of the car. I was able to give emergency crew my name and details and was awake through the whole ride 15 miles to the nearest little hospital. I never received treatment. Before I could even be wheeled into xray my dad had arrived and argued with the ER doctor to release me, which shocked everyone in the ER. By law they couldn't hold me, and my dad was Mennonite and had a very strong distrust of doctors. The ER doctor finally agreed to release me IF I could stand up on my own and walk out the door without assistance, blacking out, or throwing up. I remember him saying that. Then everyone just stood back looking at me.
They had no idea how strongly willed my dad had trained me to be. I'm not sure it's healthy to do that to kids, but with some hard focus I was able to slowly get up and stand up without assistance, and with more focus holding me through the rush of dizziness and nausea I managed to take one step after another all the way to the partking lot to my dad's car. He drove me home still internally bleeding in several areas, no support at all on my neck, and feeling very sick with dizziness and nausea. In his mind, if my survival was God-willed, then nothing could stop that and I'd be fine. His faith was like that with everything. He helped me walk into the house and settle on the pull out couch bed, and I couldn't walk again for 2 weeks. I had to crawl to the bathroom and climb onto the toilet and I couldn't eat for awhile. I'd like to add that I didn't have so much as a single tylenol or aspirin or any other kind of pain reliever. I finally decided I was tired of crawling and forced myself to stand up and take steps until I could walk without falling, and I was able to fake walking normally for many years (but not without intense pain) until a different physical therapist discovered I wasn't using certain muscles to walk, and she helpd me relearn how to walk correctly. Turned out scattered patchwork areas all over my body were numb since the crash and I couldn't feel the muscles to make them work until I had help remapping my brain to communicate with the nerves in those muscles again.
That ER doctor delivered the only baby I was able to carry to term a couple of years later. He was very tickled that she looked like a Polynesian baby like his own kids, but I later found out my baby's grandfather was half Native American. She grew up and had her own baby, and everyone joked that it must be the mailman's baby because he looked Mexican, but it was the Native American genes coming through.
That and many other experiences in my life have convinced me that this world isn't what we think it is, and we have the power to impact our world around us and the people in it in many ways, or at least to ask for help with that, be it from God, Source, your Higher Self, The Universe, or whatever you call That Which Gave Us Life.
If you are having a bad day/week/month/year/life, I love you. There is nothing you can't get through if you decide that is what you want. Hand it off to God if you need to. I have said many times "I'm too tiny, God, You do it. Please make it easier because this is so hard" and I get through stuff and continue living my life. I can't speak for anyone else's story, but I can say we can be walking miracles. If you are here to make a difference, nothing can stop you.
We're going to be ok.
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