8 Years Post Op!
I cannot believe it's been 8 YEARS since jaw surgery! It has absolutely been both one of my greatest struggles and one of my greatest accomplishments. Last year I posted that I'd been diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), and this year I add another auto-immune disease to the mix: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) (pronounced ank-kih-low-sing spon-dill-eye-tiss). This is a form of arthritis that primarily affects the spine; however, Frequency of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) involvement in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) has varied from 4% to 35% (source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3669964/). Because of my Marfan Syndrom that also causes so much joint pain and back pain, AS has essentially been "hidden in plain sight". A few months ago I went to my dentist to have some work done and my jaw was very tired and sore for about three weeks. I knew I was pushing it having my mouth propped open for an hour...bu