A few weeks ago, I had a mystery bout of vertigo. It could have been triggered by any of my existing medical conditions, or something completely unrelated. It wasn’t serious enough to invest the time and money necessary to figure it out, but I knew it was going to bother me until I had some sort of answer.
Well, I think I have figured it out.
And, just like most things medical, finding the answer was far from straightforward.
I was a couple of months out from the vertigo and had had no further incidents, but, even before that, I noticed occasional soreness in my ear. I thought it might be connected, but there was no way to know.
Then I woke up one day with extreme tooth pain. It was excruciating. There was soreness in my jaw, but, even worse, if my left upper and lower teeth touched, it shot spikes of pain through the entire area.
I was sure it was cavities. I have never had one, but one of the side effects of my side effects is that sometimes I can’t brush my teeth without triggering my gag reflex and getting sick (eew, gross, I know, but that is the reality of it sometimes – thank goodness for mouthwash). I tried several types of painkiller – Tylenol (didn’t work), Orajel (it was topical, so it could only do so much), and finally naproxen sodium (helped enough to let me sleep, but only for a few hours, and taking heavy doses is killer on kidneys that are already damaged, like mine).
It didn’t take long for me to “give in” and acknowledge that I needed to see my dentist. In the one convenient twist to this story, my dentist’s office happens to be in my apartment building, so I was able to say I could come in whenever they had time. And that time happened to be immediately.
Long story short, I do not have cavities (yay!). No, between my orthodontist giving up on giving me an overbite 30 years ago and high stress levels, I have been clenching and/or grinding my teeth, and it has inflamed my temporomandibular joint (TMJ). That is the joint at the hinge of the jaw. It’s a tiny ball-and-socket and has a ton of nerve endings.
The solution is a night guard, which is a problem because of my sensitive gag reflex. But the alternative is letting the problem persist and treating the pain by finishing off my kidneys, so no.
My dentist has promised to shave down the night guard as much as possible, and I trust him to work with me to get to a place where I can use it, not make myself sick, and keep my current kidney function. It might take a while.
In the meantime, it’s soft foods and conscious loosening of my jaw for me. I am already bored with the lack of protein.
Once I got the TMJ diagnosis, I started connecting dots. The ear pain, the pressure on the nerves and muscles involved in balance, inflammation of TMJ nerves that sit closest to the nerves that control balance. It wasn’t a huge leap to connect that the building TMJ was probably responsible for my July ER visit.
I am relieved. I can address TMJ. I am addressing the TMJ. It’s not something going wrong with my conditions. It’s not something new and catastrophic where I will have more bouts of vertigo. It’s something new and treatable.
I can finally put my medical earworm to rest.
(I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely.)