Hi again-- I had my first appt. with the PT for the trismus this afternoon. My PT's area of interest is in trismus and he has done graduate work dealing with it.

I'll share the exercises he has given me to do, but the treatment plan is individualized so please keep in mind these may not be right for you. Apparently trismus can be due to either a problem within the joint itself or with the muscles. He believes mine is with the muscles.

The first exercise I am supposed to do about 10 times a day. I am supposed to alternate between sides so I will end up doing each side five times throughout the day. For this exercise I am supposed to open my mouth and place a stack of about 8 tongue depressors between my back molars. They are not supposed to be tight. Once those are in place, slide an additional tongue depressor into the stack somewhere in the middle as far as I can. When it doesn't feel like I can push it anymore, gently and briefly bite down on the stack. Then relax and slide the depressor in further. Once I have gotten that depressor in as far as I can, hold the stretched position with the depressors in place for 60-90 seconds. Then bite down briefly, relax, and remove one depressor from the middle of the stack by sliding it out. Remove several tongue depressors using this method (remove one at a time). Finally, open your teeth off of the remaining depressors and remove them.

With the next exercise, use 4-6 depressors. Put them in your mouth sideways like a harmonica and hold them gently between the front top and bottom teeth. Slide the upper teeth gently to the right and left ten to fifteen times.

Finally, with the tip of the tongue against the top of the mouth (or make the letter N with a vibrating quality if you cannot put the tongue in that position) open and close the mouth fairly rapidly about 30 times in succession. You look kind of like a fish opening and closing its mouth on this one.

The therapist was very optimistic. He was impressed that PT was ordered so quickly for me-- I told him I had asked the RO to order it after reading about it on this website! Otherwise it may have gone untreated for quite some time!!

I don't know if this info will be of help to you or not, but hopefully you might be able to get some use out of it!