Pain In The Neck and Jaw

Hi Bodyfirst

You are still in the very early days of recovery and things like tiredness aches and pains can change from day to day. The treatments we have are so tough and the body wants to recover and will slow us down to do so. 

Trismus can fluctuate and there could be reasons for this such as overworking the jaw when exercising with the devices to stretch the muscles to open the jaw wider. The muscles can contract if they get tired.  This could also cause pain in the jaw. I don't think there should be any pain or at the very least very little when we want to open our jaws wider with our therapies given. Pain is a red flag to me to  stop or ease up/ modify what I am doing. Trismus can also be slow to see improvements but it is worth it to keep going. Stress I found could make my trismus worse, tiredness, cold weather and talking for too long as I have to work hard on getting my speech out. It will be good when you can get the advice you need from your specialist as we are told if anything worries us to contact them.

Hope this helps

Best wishes 

Nicky

Went to see the consultant today. There is still concern about my tongue and smaller lymph node in my neck from the MRI I had 10 days ago. I have another scan in two weeks and see consultant again in four weeks. He's concerned about my symptoms.

Hi Bodyfirst

Hi surgery to remove tonsils and base of my tongue, then had a second op as cancer was a bit deeper , little bit more base of tongue removed , and neck dissection to remove lymph nodes. I only had surgery no further treatment. I couldn’t open my mouth very wide as I developed Trismus. I tried the sticks but they were painful to use. My speech therapist got me a Therabite machine. Until I started using that I even had difficulty using a baby toothbrush. After 3 month I could open my jaw as normal. I won’t pretend the exercises didn’t hurt, but it does get better. Hope everything goes okay for you 

I had a hot spot on my tongue on my 16 week PET which turned out to be not cancer. It’s fairly common so fingers crossed it’s something like that. 

As Dani says it’s fairly common figures I’ve seen our around 50% can have residual hot spots. My pet xt scan was week 18 showed bit residue. The current thinking is to pet ct scan later to alleviate issues that mri scans  done too early bring xx

fingers x it’s nothing 

Hazel 

I've got a therabite but I'm now back to spatchulars as I cant open my mouth wide enough to use the therabite.