(WARNING .... shoo the kids away before you click that link ...)
Jimmy, I googled for "Lip-Bumpers" yesterday - and I couldn't find even one that bears a faint resemblance to that dreaded sharpened-hook-and-band device I was inflicted with for a couple years as a kid. Don't those new devices look kind and smooth and rounded and blunted? Oh, Praise Be for dental evolution!!
Only problem is, it would have been nice to find even one little picture of the thing installed in my mouth, maybe on a "history of orthodontics" site, so people here won't write me off as a deluded dental phobic. But no such luck --- oh well --- that's pretty understandable, anyway.
Y'know what? Monday night I went to bed with my face still aching, images of pliers and scalpels and hooks and needles and pins and posts and prongs and toothless bloody gums dancing in my brain ... when I finally decided to change gears and do something a bit more positive. Started praying, (yes praying, believe it or not) and tried some Huna again too (energetic healing technique, kinda like Reiki). Calmed me right down, and I dozed off with my hand still cupped over my jaw, lulled by the warm soothing energy rippling through my face ....
Well, I woke up next morning and the PAIN WAS GONE! ANd it's stayed GONE! :-D YESSSSSSS!!!!! This keeps up and at least I'll be able to hang in there for a few more weeks, till the dental powers that be finish their investigating and make time in their busy schedules to treat me.
Or maybe ... just maybe ... I could leave well enough alone ... might take YEARS for it to flare up again, if it ever does, and that way I could get a few more years of chomping (GENTLE chomping, on SOFT foods of course!) out of it too. Hmmm ... but I know by now exactly what they'll say at the dentist office: "Glad it feels better now, but it'll come back to haunt you if you do nothing ..."