Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 36 seconds
I wrote back in 2018 about my experience of being diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and how handshakes hurt me so much that I hugged people instead, and how it progressed to a kind of jaw-locking that made it painful to smile, chew and talk. I don’t think I ever wrote about how the jaw-locking pain (I can’t even remember what it was called right this minute) stopped. It took a while. At first, I took a muscle relaxant which helped me at least start talking and smiling, but chewing anything that was not very soft still exacerbated the pain. I did some physical therapy on my neck, and a colleague of mine had parents who did maxillofacial work and told me that I might need to put in a mouthguard for night time (to avoid grinding my jaw at night – the cause of the locked jaw was apparently the arthirtis pain causing me to grind my teeth at night). That process took a really long time… but in the middle of it, Ramadan happened!
So in Ramadan, the number of hours during the day that I could eat at all were reduced. I don’t remember that year which month Ramadan was in, but probably early summer time, so days were long, and the night time (when I could eat) was very few hours. Just this act of staying away from chewing for a long period of time, for an entire month, and then only eating soft food for the few hours I could eat, relieved my jaw, and I ended up not needing the mouthguard at all.
I just remembered this story today, and decided to write about it… just because 🙂 We can be grateful for things we forgot to stop and be grateful for way back then (I am sure I was grateful back then!). So re-living gratitude I guess.
Fearured Image of lantern by Ahmed Sabry from Pixabay