Hey everyone. 👽

I promised I’d tell you the story about my jaw. And the more I try to put it into words, the more I realize how complicated this whole journey has been.

Long story short, the joints on both sides of my jaw are deteriorating. Because of that, I can’t open my mouth properly, I can’t eat hard foods, my jaw constantly clicks, and for the last several years I’ve been dealing with migraines that can last for days.

Medication rarely helps.

My jaw muscles are constantly tense, inflamed, and uncomfortable, and at night I clench my teeth so hard that everything only gets worse.

A year ago, the pain became impossible to ignore, so I finally started treatment seriously. That’s when I first learned what a gnathologist was. For an entire year I wore special splints designed to reposition my jaw and prepare me for the next stage of treatment: braces.

And that’s where the strange part of this story begins.

It turned out that my case was much more complicated than I had been led to believe. Yet somehow nobody explained that clearly. At one point, my doctor simply handed me all my records and scans and sent me off to find an orthodontist on my own.

I spent months going from consultation to consultation, hearing doctors tell me they wouldn’t take my case. Some said braces wouldn’t help at all and that the only solution was jaw surgery — the kind where the jaw is cut, repositioned, and fixed with metal plates.

The cost of that treatment is around $20,000, not including braces, scans, consultations, and everything else that comes with it.

I was shocked.

Not only because of the price, but because nobody had honestly explained the scale of the problem from the beginning.

While searching for a doctor, almost two months passed. During that time the clicking returned, the migraines came back, and the progress I had spent an entire year working toward slowly started disappearing.

When I was in Belarus, I was offered another treatment option. No surgery, but it required removing four completely healthy teeth.

The scary part is that I was actually ready to agree to it.

I was simply exhausted.

But something about it felt wrong.

I spent hours reading stories from people with similar conditions. Some underwent surgery, others managed to solve their problems with braces and dental appliances. But I could barely find anything supporting the removal of healthy teeth in cases like mine.

In May alone, I had two severe migraine episodes. There were tears, frustration, and a lot of moments when I felt completely lost.

Right now, I’m still searching for the right doctor.

Tomorrow I’m meeting with the gnathologist who treated me for the last year. I want to look him in the eye and understand how this situation was allowed to happen.

At the same time, I recently visited another clinic. They agreed to take my case, but told me I would have to start almost from scratch. New diagnostics. New splints. New scans. Everything all over again.

But for the first time in a long while, I heard a doctor say:

“You do not need to remove healthy teeth.”

And honestly, the thing that scares me most is not the surgery. Not the cost. Not the braces.

It’s how different medical opinions can be when it comes to your health.

For now, the story continues.

I just hope that one day I’ll be able to come back here and write a happy ending.