When I first regained feeling in my lower right jaw, I could feel everything. I could feel the vibrations when I talked or drove. I could feel the change in air pressure when I breathed (even through my nose) or had a fan on me. I could feel the change in blood pressure driven by my heart beat in the lower right of my jaw.
And by “feel” I mean “felt pain in response to” (the vibration was a separate sensation that accompanied the pain).
The pain ebbs and flows, but I stopped feeling my heartbeat and breath a few days ago . The fan is still uncomfortable (which is awesome in the middle of a heat wave), there’s a constant ache that is much less susceptible to pain medication, chewing (even on the other side) hurts some, and if I tap my two front right teeth together I want to die. I nonetheless keep doing it completely on purpose, because I just cannot believe that something so light hurts so much. If I put something- even hard metal- between them, I can apply much more pressure before it hurts. I used to have a milder version of the same thing with my right molars and pre-molars, but that has subsided for now.
When I’m not actively experiencing this, it’s kind of fascinating. I can occasionally feel my heartbeat in my fingers while meditating, but nothing like this. And how on Earth could teeth detect anything to do with air? The implication is that my and everyone else’s nerves are always capable of this sensitivity, but choose to ignore it.
I am limited in how much I can research this right now, because nothing breeds neuropathic pain like reading about it. But my OT found me this continuing dental education article on the teeth as sensory organs. The gist seems to be that teeth have nerves, and they use this to avoid breaking themselves by biting too hard. The article doesn’t discuss it, but teeth are temperature sensitive as well, so I assume cold is bad for the teeth as well. Teeth that have their nerves removed via root canal are more prone to breaking, and the author’s conclusion is that this is because they’re incapable of noticing when they apply too much pressure, the same way lepers injure themselves.
From this, I conclude that my teeth were detecting very minor sensations as dire threats. This is one reason I think it’s important to keep doing things that hurt (when you know they won’t cause actual injury): the nerve needs to experience a range of experiences so it can learn what genuine danger feels like, so it stops overreacting to minor sensation changes. This is also why good pain meds are so key to recovery: without them, I couldn’t risk heavier sensations. I also think they might “train” my nerve to not freak out so much, which would be why at first a tiny dab of topical pain killer brought me hours of relief.
It’s also clear that the nerves on the top and bottom of my jaw are “talking” to each other, or that something in the jaw muscle recognizes “closed” as a state. That’s the only way it makes sense for two teeth touch to hurt when the same teeth holding a piece of paper or a metal spoon don’t. Even though the pain feels like it’s only in the lower right front tooth, it’s actually a product of synthesis of several different nerves (or rather, several different branches of the trigeminal nerve). You have to admit this is pretty cool, even when it’s excruciatingly painful.
Aceso Under Glass 