Hello all,

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post. I've been hoping that something encouraging would happen in the last 6 months but sadly my wife's condition remains exactly the same as it has since April 2009. She still suffers from chronic pain and swelling in her left jaw area around the joint and into the front of her cheek.

She did indeed see a new dentist who gave her a very thorough exam and took high quality scans of her teeth. He found nothing out of the ordinary to explain her condition. His best guess was that an upper molar MAY be causing a problem and could need to be extracted but he had absolutely no data to prove his theory. It was just his best guess. My wife refused to have a tooth extracted based on a guess, especially since that's what the first dentist did to her. He extracted a tooth that he thought was the problem which didn't fix the problem at all, but instead gave her the severe pain she now has in her jaw and face.

He referred my wife to an oral surgeon who also took scans and found nothing out of the ordinary that would require surgery to correct. We specifically asked him if the problem was TMJ disorder and he flatly said no, it was not TMJ. My wife then went BACK to the dentist to have fillings replaced in two lower teeth. This of course did nothing to help her jaw and face pain. He then sent her on her way saying he'd see her again at her regular cleaning appointment in the fall.

So here we are, right where we started two years ago. We've seen a dozen specialists and nobody has a clue what to do about this. Many signs seem to point to TMJ disorder but two or more doctors say that it's not TMJ. Throughout the process the doctors have prescribed my wife to take a number of meds hoping they can at least relieve some of her symptoms, but they're mostly useless. And to top it all off my wife has now been told she has high thyroid levels. This happened once or twice in the last year or two but after retesting her levels were back to normal. She's about to start taking a new med to help bring her thyroid levels down.

Now we're wondering if any of this is connected and if some of the medications are actually to blame for the high thyroid results. As a result of all this she's currently taking: Flexeril, Arthrotec 50, Asterpro, Advair, and Ventolin.

It's an awful mess and we have no idea how to proceed. I'm not sure how much more suffering my wife can take at this point. And to add insult to injury, our medical insurance carrier still refuses to pay for anything they suspect is TMJ related. They even denied coverage for the oral surgeon evaluation even though he specifically stated on the report that there was no TMJ. The insurance company stated that because there was a history of TMJ in the past then this was related and therefore not covered. I swear that if I were a lawyer I'd be suing somebody by now.