A student has told of her horror after a sweet broke her jaw, leaving her unable to eat solid food for more than a month.
Javeria Wasim, 19, decided to bite straight into the ‘giant’ 3-inch diameter candy instead of sucking on it until it softened.
With one bite, Wasim’s jaw immediately hurt and her friend pointed out that her front tooth was chipped and another tooth was “wobbly.”
Wasim was rushed to hospital where she had an X-ray and a CT scan which showed she had suffered two fractures in her jaw.
Doctors said Wasim’s tooth was “wobbly” because it was resting on top of the bone that had been “split” into two parts.
Due to the damage caused, her jaw had to be wired closed for six weeks and she now needs braces to fix her misaligned teeth.
The business student said she could not open her mouth but blamed the pain on her broken tooth and had no idea she could have broken her jaw.
Javeria Wasim from Toronto, Canada, and her friend decided to buy ‘giant’ jaw crushers with a diameter of 7.5 cm while shopping last month
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After an hour-long operation the next day, Wasim’s jaw was put back into place and a rod was inserted into her upper and lower gums, keeping her jaw closed for the next six weeks.
She admits that the incident left her so “traumatized” that she will “probably never try a jawbreaker again.”
Explaining the sequence of events, Wasim said, “I was at the mall with my friend and we went into a store to see if they had jawbreakers. We got a giant one, the biggest size they had.
“I said, ‘We have to break it, because people are licking their way through it, and it takes them months to get through it.’
“We were talking about it and asked, ‘Can we bite into this? The candy is literally called a jawbreaker.”
‘I had them as a little kid. I’ve seen videos of people biting the little ones, but I’d never seen anyone biting the big ones.
“I bit it and just made a hole, and my jaw started to hurt. My friend looked over and said my tooth was chipped.
‘It hurt really bad. I cried a lot when the ambulance came, and everything was blurry.
‘They told me my jaw was broken and I had to wire it shut. I was shocked; I thought my biggest problem was my broken tooth.’
Once back in her dorm room, the 19-year-old admits she became impatient to get to the center of the gumball and tried to bite into the candy – it saw her break her jaw
An ambulance took Wasim to hospital where she underwent an X-ray and a CT scan, and she was ‘shocked’ to discover she had suffered two fractures in her jaw
‘I couldn’t open my mouth, but I thought it was because of the pain from my tooth.
‘I had to have surgery, they put my jaw back in place and put a stick in my gums at the top and bottom and closed it up.’
Wasim’s ‘wobbly’ bottom teeth are now sideways and braces are needed to secure her bottom teeth, as well as her front teeth which were ‘spreading apart’.
The student had to stick to a completely liquid diet of shakes and soups until her jaw was loosened on December 23.
Wasim said she struggled with the liquid diet and the side effects of the surgery while studying for her exams.
‘All my bottom teeth are broken. My two front teeth now have a small gap so I will have to get braces to fix them,” she said.
‘I can’t eat anything, all I eat is protein shakes and soups, I’ve lost seven pounds in two weeks.
‘I haven’t eaten for 42 days, I have soup, but you’re never full, you’re always hungry.
‘All I can think about is how hungry I am. I took the feeling of being full for granted. I miss food so much.
‘I also feel irritated all the time. I can’t open my mouth, I can’t lick my lip when food gets on it, I can’t use my teeth to open anything.
The student had to stick to a completely liquid diet of shakes and soups until her jaw was loosened on December 23
Wasim said she struggled with the liquid diet and the side effects of the surgery while studying for her exams.
‘You realize how important your mouth is, you use it for literally everything in your life. It has affected my life so much.
‘The first week of the operation I was in so much pain, I can’t explain it. I just lay in bed and took painkillers.
“I was sleeping because the only time I wasn’t in pain was when I was sleeping.”
Considering how badly the incident has affected her, Wasim is now urging others to lick the sweets alone, even if it takes weeks for them to reach the centre.
‘It was a stupid idea I had with my boyfriend. I’m definitely traumatized, so I would say I probably wouldn’t have one anymore,” Wasim said.
“It was such a stupid thing, people break their jaws in car accidents and fights, this was such a avoidable way to break your jaw.
“I would tell people that if they’re going to be in the middle of a jawbreaker, it’s better to take six weeks to get through it rather than spend six weeks suffering the consequences of biting and jaw locking.” .’