Jaw Dislocation

A sharp crack. A piercing pain in front of the ear. And then that strange moment when you realise: your mouth will not close anymore. Or will not open anymore. The lower jaw stands crooked, shifted, wrong. You feel around with your hand, move carefully — and it stays as it is. The jaw is dislocated.

A jaw dislocation is an acute event. The condyle of the lower jaw springs out of the joint socket — sometimes while yawning, while laughing loudly, while biting into too large an apple, sometimes after a fall, a blow, an extreme tension. The joint locks. You cannot speak, chew, swallow the way you want to. A part of you has — literally — come out of joint.