I am very surprised and happy to see many people responding to my post! All your suggestions are very helpful and I have been taking tips and suggestions seriously. Since my last post I have been doing the exercises with my jaw such as moving it constantly throughout the day and also using the tongue depressors. One morning I was able to put 6 on each side! But it quickly went down to 3 that same evening. The following morning my mouth would not even open to the point where I could even get 1 depressor in and it hurt more than anything. After doing more research online I have been seeing that people have also been told NOT to force the jaw muscles open. Now this makes sense to me. Common sense tells a person if it causes a lot of pain do not do it. Now I have a very high threshold for pain, and this pain is way out of control! Plus when doing the excercises my cheek and jaw would swell up to the point where I was looking like the elephant man. Needless to say, yesterday I stopped stretching with the depressors...and started sleeping on a heating pad on low and taking three excedrin for the pain and swelling. This seemed to help with both, however I cannot open my mouth AT ALL. My question to all of you....What is better to use? Heat or Ice? or...both at different times of the day?