Hey All,

I had my lower wisdom teeth removed last Christmas, and one of them developed a persistent infection. So I went back to my surgeon a few weeks ago (I was on exchange from January til June) to have him clean it out. After the surgery, the left side of my jaw muscles have been pretty weak (the infection apparently spread into the cheek a bit, so the incision affected the part of the cheek parallel to the teeth), but they've been coming back in strength slowly. However, one part of their mobility has seen almost no improvement: my lips twist to the right when I spit (say after brushing my teeth), because the lower left lip seems unable to "pinch" in the right direction. When I went back last week for the check-up, the surgeon reassured me that that's normal, that it might take several weeks for the functions to go back to normal.

But I'm just kind of anxious. Maybe it's just a psychological thing, but I've had a couple of really terrible experiences with dentists/orthodontists in the past, and I just get really worried about dental issues.

Does anyone know if oral muscles always knit back properly? There's no way that some of the muscles grew back together and formed wrong connections, right?