I grind my teeth at night. Sometimes, I catch myself clenching my jaw during the day. I struggle with anxiety and have PTSD from childhood trauma and have frequent nightmares. I’m not sure the nightmares are related to teeth grinding, but nighttime teeth grinding is common among people with anxiety. I never really thought this mattered much–even when I cracked a molar one night–but it’s a much bigger problem than I thought. If you grind your teeth, don’t let what just happened to me happen to you.
Basically, the constant grinding has caused the bone tissue in my jaw to build up into little hills. The tissue over these bony ridges is thinner than normal, so when I ate some toast for breakfast one morning, the toast (I’m serious) scratched my mouth and exposed the bone. It’s a small cut, maybe a little less than the size of the tip of a pencil eraser, but it hurts like crazy.
If you have anxiety, talk to your dentist to make sure you aren’t grinding your teeth at night. Ask her if she has any suggestions. I was supposed to get a bite guard a couple of years ago when I cracked my tooth, but my insurance wouldn’t pay for it. I have new insurance that covered sixty percent of it and am getting one made for sleeping, but I don’t know if that affects the bone growth.
I should be okay. I’m using antibiotic rinses and eating a soft diet for two weeks. If it doesn’t heal over, I’ll have to go to an oral surgeon. I had never heard of anything like this, which is why I’m sharing it now. It has nothing to do with writing other than delaying my novel’s release date a bit, but this seemed a good time for a PSA post.
Take care of yourselves–particularly if you’ve been abused. When you’ve lived through those kinds of things, you have to love yourself just that little bit more.
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