Update

Well faithful readers (all three of you), I guess it's time for me to tell you what's going on.

On Thursday night, I dislocated my jaw. It happened while I was yawning; don't fret yourself about you yawning and dislocating your jaw, though: I've had problems with my jaw for awhile now, and I've dislocated it before, but this time was worse than it had ever been. My entire jaw bone had popped out of both sockets, and I could feel that my jaw bones had moved into my upper cheeks. My roommate took me to the hospital, my mouth gaping wide open, and she didn't even make fun of me once, bless her heart.

We got to the Emergency Room, me with a towel over my mouth, and my roommate telling them what happened to me, seeing as I couldn't talk. We waited for about 20 minutes, they got me into a room, put me under, and relocated it while I was out. They had to put me under because my muscles were spasming so much, which is really the only thing that made the dislocation painful. When it first happened, it didn't hurt at all, and was more scary than anything, because I couldn't fix it like I'd been able to do before, but the longer it was stuck open, the more my muscles spasmed, and the more it hurt.

None of the doctors in the ER had ever seen anything like it. I had probably 3 or 4 doctors come in and feel my jaw, just because they had never seen it happen to anyone, and there were probably 5 or 6 nurses who just came in looking shocked.

So, my state as of this moment is that I'm not in much pain, just a bit of discomfort. I can open my mouth just wide enough to see about a finger's width of space between my teeth, and I can only eat soft foods, which has proved to be quite a challenge for me. I've craved steak, pizza, Costa Vida, burritos, Taco Bell, cookies, and the list goes on. Just about anything you can chew, I'd love to eat it but can't. I have an appointment with an Oral Maxillofacial surgeon on Tuesday, and he will be able to tell me more about the situation. From what little I know, however, my jaw will never be the same. The surgeon can give me some treatments that can help some, but now that I've dislocated it as bad as I have, I'm much more susceptible dislocating it again. In essence, I just have to be really careful what I do with my jaw for...the rest of my life.

I will post more again on Tuesday or Wednesday once I know more about the situation, but I thank all of you for your prayers and your help through all of this. It will more than likely delay my papers for a bit, which has been hard for me to deal with, but I will go when the Lord wants me to go. This was obviously something He wanted me to take care of before I left, and He knows best, so I'm just going to trust in Him and He will lead me through.