I went to the dentist for my annual check-up. Most people hope they don’t have any cavities, but I hope he’ll tell me my jaw is not a ticking time bomb. But as usual, Dr Shaw bounced my mouth open and shut, asking me to bite down on things to measure the misalignment. Nothing had changed.
“What am I looking at with TMJ?” I asked through teeth that were clenched due to a tensed jaw. “A cortisone shot? Dental plates? Wiring?”
Dr Shaw removed the bite plate and squinted at my X Ray. “We’re not in the middle ages,” he assured me. “We don’t wire jaws closed unless they’re severely broken.” He put my x-ray down. “And actually, TMJ is the joint involved, the Temporomandibular Joint. What you have is a TMJ disorder, or TMD.”
I relaxed my lower lip. Well, now I knew the proper name for this irritation. “My original question was do I need to get my jaw broken to fix my TMD? Severely broken?”
“What are you watching on television these days?” he scolded me, shaking his head. I thought about the wife-swapping show Cara and Niamh had told me about. It gave me a pain in my jaw, and Dr Shaw caught me raising a hand to still it. He raised his eyebrows, and began opening and closing my mouth again. “From the x ray, it shouldn’t be hurting you that much. There’s really no damage to the cartilage discs at the joint, worn down teeth, or sign of arthritis.”
Lovely. “So it’s all in my head?” I asked, attempting a dazzling smile. (Ouch)
“I didn’t say that,” Dr Shaw countered kindly. “I absolutely believe you are experiencing pain, only that the actual physical manifestations are so slight.”
I frowned. (That didn’t hurt.) “That still sound like it’s all my head.”
Dr Shaw sighed. “Look, I could give you some treatment, but if I’m not seeing any misalignment or erosion, a bite plate might create one. And a cortisone shot is not something we should be giving out willy-nilly.” He grimaced sympathetically. “It could be bad posture…are you staring at a computer screen all day?”
I did use a computer at work, but I wasn’t tied down to it, like Cara was in her job as a network administrator. In PR, there’s a lot of interaction with people, on the phone or in person. You have multiple things to check up on in the course of a project, from brochure layouts to venues for events. I actually spent a lot more time on my feet than most people. I shook my head, and Dr Shaw considered what else could cause the problem.
He poked at my ear and neck. “Does any of this hurt?” he asked. “With TMD, you could have trigger points.” I shook my head as he prodded. “Are you sleeping all right? Sometimes lack of sleep can trigger muscular problems.” Again I shook my head. He slid my jaw back and for, listening for the clicking of a misalignment. “It could be stress…” he said. “Have you tried relaxation techniques?”
I winced at the memory. My older sister Trish had paid for a course in hot yoga for the two of us a year ago. The sight of two women in their thirties sweating like hogs in clingy exercise gear while failing to hold the downward-facing dog is surely a violation of the Geneva convention. We gave up after three classes (when Trish had to be rushed at A&E to be treated for heat exhaustion.) I tried meditation…but ended up hurling the CD across the room when it advised me to open my “third eye”.
Dr Shaw noted my expression. “Have you tried acupuncture?” he suggested, letting go of my face. “A lot of people have good results with acupuncture.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Aren’t you the one who told me I shouldn’t get shots willy-nilly?”
“The needles in acupuncture are much finer so they’re practically painless. Also, nothing is being injected with them.”
I had focused only on his first sentence. “Practically painless?” I repeated.
Forcing a cheerful smile, he opened a side drawer in the bureau behind the examining chair. “Here’s the name of an acupuncturist people I know go to,” he said, handing me a card. Stellar Hong Li, qualified practitioner of Chinese medicine. Stellar?
“But you don’t go to this person,” I clarified, tucking the card into my pocket. I like my dentist, but I wondered if he had a bridge to sell me as well.
“I did have acupuncture years ago, for a back injury,” Dr Shaw told me. “Dr Li comes highly recommended.”
It was my turn to sigh. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“I can’t ask for more.” He patted my arm, all business-like. “With TMD, you have to avoid gum chewing, and hard, tough foods. You should be careful when you stretch your jaw, like when yawning or singing.” I was already a terrible singer, but now I’d be mumbling through hymns in church? “I’m really not seeing anything serious. This may just go away on its own. It’s certainly not interfering too much with your life right now. These things have a tendency to go away on their own after a flare-up.”
I looked at him sharply. “And then they could just reappear!”
Dr Shaw shrugged. “Yes, that’s a possibility. But if you avoid over-stretching your jaw, take over-the-counter pain killers when it’s particularly nasty, try some relaxation techniques as well as the acupuncture, we can successfully treat this.” He slapped his thighs, pulling away from the chair in a smooth business-like transition. “Now let’s get those teeth cleaned, since you’re already here.” He got up from the chair he sat in while examining me and his dental hygienist swooped in, nasty hook at the ready. I fought not to cringe, as that kind of facial movement was not helping me.
The hygienist paused over me, and moved her face mask down. “You really should try acupuncture,” she told me. “It barely hurts and it helped me quit smoking!”
I tried a polite smile, but my jaw was hurting again.
I was looking at the card Dr Shaw had given me that evening when the phone rang. I fully expected it to be Cara, as my other two sisters had already called me to see what the news on my jaw was.
“Can you talk, or is your mouth all wired up?” Cara’s voice asked cheerfully when I answered the phone. See Dr Shaw? I’m not the only one who thinks like this…
“You’re one to talk, what with your mouth full of wires when you were a teenager!” I teased. Cara hates to be reminded of the braces she wore in her awkward phase.
“Shut up,” she said, not unpleasantly. “So, what’s the word?”
“No change,” I told her. “I have some misalignment of the temporomandibular joint, to give it its proper name, or maybe I’m just stressed or over-stretching my jaw. So far, nothing is to be done, for fear of making it worse.”
“Exacerbating it, to use the proper term,” Cara shot back proudly.
“That’s a big word for a little sister,” I cajoled. Cara did the “da dum dum pssht” sound of a drum rim shot.
“Well, that’s it for the Cara and Lisa show…so how do you feel?”
“The Lisa and Cara Show,” I corrected her. “No change…I’m fine.”
There was a pause, and I could almost hear Cara thinking. “You know, Niamh’s been doing a lot of reading up on that big vice bust in America,” she told me. My grip on the phone suddenly turned precariously weak.
“Really? Niamh?”
“She’s been going through the stats on prostitution, and sex trafficking,” Cara went on.
I thought of the discussion I’d had with Jimmy at work. “You know, those two are the same thing,” I told Cara. She groaned.
“Yes, Niamh gave me the same lecture,” she said. “Just because a woman may not have been overtly forced into prostitution makes her no less a victim,” she quoted in a robotic voice. She gave a little laugh. “Whoever would have thought that you and Niamh would start to sound alike?” Whoever indeed.
“I’m glad to see that someone’s taking an interest,” I said. Hint hint, Cara. I was glad to think of something other than my painful jaw, even if it was the hideous reality of sexual exploitation. “The problem is really wide-spread, and it’s a disgusting reality. This is modern-day slavery!”
“I know,” Cara said. “That’s another thing Niamh said, by the way.”
“Well I’m glad that someone else cares. What’s she planning to do about it?” It came out far more demanding than I meant, but I didn’t want to be the nice comfortable woman who made sympathetic noises but didn’t do anything.
“Well, she’s signed a couple of online petitions, and sent a letter to our MEP.” Cara sounded defensive.
“Did you do that too?” I ploughed on, wishing I had also signed an online petition.
“Yes. Hey Lisa, we can’t all start an awareness campaign.”
“Can’t you?” I asked. “A lot of regular people start movements. Think about the widows and mothers of the vanished activists who dance in public in South America!”
“Hey, take it down a notch. A few days ago all you were doing was praying at every red traffic light!”
All I was doing? I took a deep angry breath, my jaw enflamed. “First of all, you are never just praying, you are talking to God-“
“Lisa?”
It was now Niamh’s voice on the phone. I stood silently, open-mouthed. I remembered not to over-stretch my jaw, and snapped my mouth shut.
“It’s Niamh. Cara was making a face and about to hang up. I grabbed the phone so I could tell you I think your campaign against prostitution is inspirational.”
“Niamh?” I gurgled. She was saying words I had never expected to come out of her mouth. And certainly not to me. Inspirational? My mouth fell open again.
“I’ve been reading up on the subject. I think Cara should get more involved, too. I think we should all do something about the mass exploitation of women and children!”
The grand scale of it was alarming, but there were other victims we shouldn’t overlook. “There are male prostitutes as well,” I mumbled. The literature did show that women were dominantly the target group.
“Of course, but the majority of the victims are female,” Niamh said with the authority of having read several reports on the topic. “I don’t want to be a man-hater, but the more I read up on the sex industry, the angrier I’m getting. I’m starting to hate the way society sees women, always in a sexual context. I mean, even the term woman…that basically just womb-man.”
Uh oh. Niamh certainly was sounding like a man-hater. I was fortunate to have heard Kate debate feminist themes on several occasions, so I had some things to say that might deflect some of Niamh’s fury. “You’re right there, but some languages have different terms for women, sometimes even no gender-specific pronouns. But guess what, the women in those cultures are no better or worse off than we are.” That was a bit of a lie – in some of those cultures women certainly had less rights than we did in Western Europe. “I’m telling you this trivia to help you not dwell on little things,” I explained. “Yes, womb-man kind of sounds offensive if you think about it, but it’s like the term drug-abuse. You don’t abuse drugs, you abuse yourself…child abuse means you’re abusing the child-“
“What are you talking about?” Niamh interrupted. I had lost her, trying to parrot back the arguments Kate had made. I had even kind of lost myself, to be honest.
“Look, I have a friend who can explain it much better than I can,” I admitted. “I just want to say you need to hate the sinner, not the sin. We’re all guilty when it comes to treating women as objects; I mean, why do we let ourselves get told by magazines what we should look like? Why do we still have beauty contests?” I was flailing fast; I really wished Kate were around to calmly take over for me. I took a deep breath, and hoped Niamh was still with me. “I’m just really glad that you agree with me,” I said finally. I felt a warm comforting glow when I realised that I was having a calm, productive discussion with Niamh. I suddenly remembered what she had said when she came on the phone. “Cara was going to hang up on me?”
Niamh laughed. “You know what your sister is like. She doesn’t like it when you take stands on things. She’ll kick the hornet’s nest, but hates the mess that it makes.” I could hear Cara’s howl of protest, but had to admit, Niamh was spot-on about Cara.
Cara had taken the phone back. “Look, I signed the petitions, I just don’t want to burn my bra!”
“You know that never happened-“
“Stop with the lectures! I’m getting it in stereo!” she shouted. “All right, I surrender! I’ll go on your take back the night marches and whatever else you’re doing!”
“You can just start by praying,” I told her. “That’s what I did.”
“And then you started a campaign.” Cara was sounding a lot like Eileen McGrath-Roth.
“The Spirit moved me.” I had heard people say that, usually in movies or in testimonies, but I was really glad to be able to say it myself. I smiled, tears welling up in my eyes. Please let my jaw feel better, I prayed. I closed my eyes, letting the tears flow. I relaxed my jaw, and surprisingly, felt no pain. Cautiously, I tested my mouth. I moved my lower jaw from side to side, and it felt normal.