Hi. I'm now three months post radiation and doing pretty well in general. My trismus probs set in after my major surgery in February. For various reasons I have found it hard to carry out regular exercises to improve the situation but after the rads were all over and I started to heal, the mouth opening became a lot easier. A week or two ago I even had three fillings at the hospital dental clinic with no difficulty holding my mouth open. The fillings were in the front which made it easier but I didn't get the jaw ache I felt with every RT treatment where the tongue depressor forced my jaw open in a horrible way. Good news I thought.

BUT more recently I saw a prosthodontist about making me a more permanent dental plate. I had to wait 2 hours to see him for 5 minutes, so busy, busy was that clinic. It was therefore impossible to actually discuss stuff. He said my problems eating were not because of my lack of teeth but the "lack of room in there". I don't think he meant the flap etc but the lack of jaw opening. I immediately felt guilty about not stretching it more! I've been using the ice block (popsicle) stick method where I can only just fit 11 sticks between my top and bottom front teeth. That gives me a far better stretch than just using my fingers. However I keep making excuses not to do it: my teeth are loose so I might damage them; I'll do it later when I'm feeling chirpier; it doesn't make any difference anyway etc etc.

Any advice? I've looked up Trismus on the site and know about the Therabyte but maybe they're not available here???

And one more thing. I'm scared my old plate will break before I get the new one. What do people know about temporary gap fillers or veneers or dentures?

Love to all
M