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A woman has bravely opened up about how she was able to function with her jaw wired closed after a night out went terribly wrong.
Caroline Murray's ordeal began when she walked around on her wooden floor in her socks after drinking, only to slip and fall with disastrous consequences. Watch below:
She told Tyla in an exclusive interview: "I broke my jaw, I knocked some teeth loose, I fractured my skull.
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"When your jaw is broken, basically, since it's such a frequently used bone, you move it so much, the only way to get it to heal is to bolt it in place."
While Caroline had largely regained access to her jaw at the time of her interview, she explained that even now she still has some of the bolts - which are known as arch bars - in her mouth.
When her jaw was sealed shut, she was 'bombarded' with questions about how she was able to eat.
"I'm on a liquid diet," she explained. "It's mostly liquid. They train me to move my mouth a certain way and, like, hang my head."
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She admitted the 'weird' practice was taught to her in the hospital before her discharge.
"The pain took weeks to go away," she continued. "It was a really, really tough recovery, especially when, you know, I had the surgery where they bolted my mouth shut.
"The whole purpose [of the wires] is to just hold [my jaw] in place and during that time, you just kind of have to learn how to eat.
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"I was on a liquid diet for about a month. I think I lost probably 10lb to 15lb throughout the whole thing because obviously, you know, I couldn't eat much and eating like that is such a pain."
Caroline documented what her life was like with a wired jaw on TikTok, sharing videos of herself sucking her liquid food into her mouth.
She told Tyla that because eating like that was such an effort, she found herself getting grumpy because she wasn't getting enough food.
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The first step in her journey towards normality involved the insertion of rubber bands, which allowed her to open her jaw a little.
Thankfully, Caroline was good humoured about her ordeal and joked about looking like a piranha with her rubber bands.
She explained that the rubber bands helped her get used to the feeling of chewing again, but while she was getting better, the wires in her mouth were cutting her gums.
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While Caroline has now had the rubber bands removed, she has not entirely recovered at the time of her interview and is still 'learning how to eat again.'
But she has tried to look on the bright side of the situation regardless.
She said: "You can either be sad or you can start laughing and try to have a good spirit about it."
Topics: Real Life
Emma Guinness