These days, the only major sign of my accident is the arch bars on my teeth. The oral surgeon told me that they’d stay on until my mouth is opening normally enough that he is sure they won’t be needed again. As the days progress, I find myself increasingly impatient for this to happen. I don’t particularly mind the look, and the arch bars aren’t even that visible. It’s just that I feel like I’m about ten years too old to have braces on my teeth.
Over the last week or so, I’ve been stretching my jaw muscles more and more. The oral surgeon only told me I should work on opening wider, but sometimes I work on the side-to-side motions a bit, hoping that it might help to correct the problem of the right side of my mouth opening further than the left.
The truth is that I don’t even really know how far my mouth should be able to open, or even what straight is. The latter question seems like it should be easily settled, but it’s not so easy because my front teeth aren’t perfectly straight. Some of them have shifted slightly since the accident (owing to my inability to wear a retainer while my jaw was wired), and two were chipped and then repaired artificially. The oral surgeon wants me to focus on keeping my chin straight, but even that’s not so easy because my chin has a small bump on the right side where it was stitched up. As for the width of the opening, I haven’t been able to find out what is normal, but I’m pretty sure that it’s wider than my opening of about four centimeters.
If there’s one thing that keeps me from sitting around and exercising my jaw all day long, it’s the understanding that my trying too hard to fit in may well have caused the accident in the first place. I’m not quite sure what could go wrong here. I doubt that my muscles are strong enough to break the bone again, but I’d rather not find out.
Shock and Jaw 
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