9 Days in Mouth Excercise hints?

Exercising
I'm not sure how much of it is from surgery and how much from radiation, but I developed scar tissue that impeded (and impedes) the range of motion of my mouth. Eventually, this leads to something called trismus that needs to be attended to, and I applaud your doctor for being pro-active in this regard. As others have noted, many do not, for some reason, think of this distinct possibility.

In my case, I was referred to both a speech therapist AND a physical therapist who specializes to some degree in working with folks such as us. In my case, the PT was of far greater value to me than the speech therapist.

For what it is worth, when we got together the first time, like you in the midst of treatment (and in my case almost immediately after leaving the hospital two weeks after the surgery), I do not believe I was best prepared to take advantage of the assistance. I am seeing the PT again, now, with greater awareness of the value.

Among the things we did and do:

Application of warm, moist towels around the neck and jaw area for maybe 15 minutes per session

Exercises to project the lower jaw FORWARD; when done without her help, I simply do as suggested, extending my lower teeth outward, but so that I can feel the lower jaw extending forward too. Hold for 30 seconds or until it becomes too uncomfortable

Extend the lower jaw to the RIGHT as far as possible and hold for 30 seconds

Extend the lower jaw to the LEFT as far as possible and hold for 30 seconds

Open the mouth, as someone has suggested, as wide open as you can, and hold for 30 seconds

Repeat these three times daily which is fairly easy to do when you are at home, but not so easy maybe at the office

My PT does some additional things that I cannot do myself, such as getting her fingers inside my mouth and massaging my muscles, pulling my jaw down or side to side, that sort of thing, and massaging my neck and jaw muscles.

You can also use popsicle sticks to sort of pry your mouth open, a cheap man's version of something called a Therabyte that is not so cheap and I would not recommend unless you anticipate a longer duration of time with the problem. I have one, and it works great, but I think the little thing costs over $400 while the popsicle sticks do pretty much the same job.

One thing that I have been instructed about is a tendency on my part, due to the trismus issue, to talk through my teeth rather than opening my mouth. When my mouth is open I am MUCH easier to understand, and had not realized on my own that I had fallen into that teeth gritting habit.

Hope this helps.

Take care,

Joe