Back from the doctor and everything is progressing fairly normally, though she did say I'd likely be in the arch bars longer than the original plan was. It's not unusual to have little progress in opening until when one is only taking the bands off for eating. So hopefully I'll see more progress when I'm able to wear them at night only. I'm not ready for that at this point, 'cause my bite is trying to pull to the right, and the bands will help prevent that from happening. In one week I'm supposed to wear the bands only at night and see how that affects my bite, then my appointment is a several days after that and she'll check my progress.
Depending on how things are going she said she'd probably start me on some jaw exercises then. If that fails, I'd see a physical therapist. I asked for worse case scenario and she said it would be basically a joint replacement (if I'm remembering correctly), but she really doesn't think its going to come to that. If I did need surgery down the line it would most likely just removing scar tissue to regain better mobility in the joint. But hopefully time and exercises will allow me to regain function and it won't come to that either. Of course I wish she or I could predict the future, but sadly that is not possible.
Good news is that the noise I'm hearing from my jaw probably isn't an indication of disc damage, I don't remember exactly what she said could be causing the noise, but it seemed plausible. I wish I had a better memory :) I also have a new rubber band position. I've gone from two diagonals to one rectangle to a triangle on the left, the right side has consistently been one diagonal. This new configuration feels the most natural to me.
Totally random, but why does the plastic thing I use to put my bands on glow in the dark? I can't imagine having any success trying to put bands on in the dark. Maybe there people out there that are more talented than I am.
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