Jane Gliders' Story
(...) I'd been fighting pain for so long and I just had enough. (...) Over a decade ago I actually dislocated my jaw.(...) It was locked open and when I actually had to put it back into place, I had to sort of manoeuvre my jaw back into place and it caused a lot of damage as well. (...) Consequently I couldn't open my mouth, probably more than a centimetre. I had to go and see a surgeon. He suggested some surgery. He said the risk of that would be that eventually the bone would die. I went on for a few years with no real problems. The only thing I couldn't do was open my mouth. I couldn't open my mouth probably more than two centimetres. (...) For a decade I remember I started to get a little bit of pain. I thought it was toothache because I'd been to a dentist. There was no trouble with my teeth and as soon as the dentist said that, I went, I know what it is. My jaw was starting to die.(...) At that point I was taking some pretty strong medications to combat pain. I was actually very, very ill, couldn't work, just pretty much stayed at home. We were waiting for surgery and it was delayed and in August 2020 I got my first surgery. They put a titanium joint on the right side. What a huge difference. I just felt such relief. I could go out, I actually got a job and things were going along alright. I recovered from that surgery and then it would have been 2022. (...) The pain set in on my left side.(...) Pain was getting worse and worse. At this point it was radiating down my top and bottom jaw so every tooth was firing up with nerves. (...) Incredible pain. When you've got toothache, the worst toothache you can imagine, multiply that by 10 and have it in every tooth. If I put my teeth together, it would just send electric shocks and I was getting these shocks across my eyes and like needles up into my head. (...) I teach sewing. I get pain attached during class and so I had explained to the kids that if they saw me in pain not to worry that I would just remove myself and I'd go out the back and cry. The pain would last about half an hour and then it would just leave. (...) And I was getting that several times a day and I just went straight back to the surgeon and I said look, you've got to have a look. He said the joint is fine. There was no nerve compression but I was still getting all the symptoms of trigeminal neuralgia. I started to feel incredibly hopeless because having been a nurse I went, there's no cure. What do I do now? I've got to live the rest of my life on these drugs that was just growing up my body. We were calling ambulances in the middle of the night because I was taking so much morphine that I was scared I was going to overdose. So we would call them in to help manage the next dose so that I'd be safe. The doctors were just at a quandary of what to do with me. Nothing was working. I was getting prayer from everybody. (...) You live in this hope as someone who believes in Jesus. He used to think, how can we live like this? Jesus never intended us to live in pain like this. But I lived in this hope of maybe I could get a healing. I'm writing, I want to be healed. I need this healing. Every day I go, you've got this God, you've got this. I can't live in this pain if I don't have you. But I was even getting hopeless with that. I was just feeling like it wasn't going to happen for me. I was distraught. I cried. I didn't know how to go through. The next day I was just trying really hard to get one foot in front of the other. (...) Each day they're trying to function and do well and run a business and be a wife and a mother and not be a failure.(...) I've been fighting pain for so long and I just had enough. (...) And my pastor sat me down one day and we talked it through and we acknowledged that feeling of hopelessness. They laid hands on me and we prayed.(...) It was a few days afterwards I went, I said to my husband, no pain. It was really unusual. I was getting it every day and in the middle of the night.(...) And he kept going, what about today? And I go, no pain today. (...) And the next day, what about today?(...) And it went for about six weeks and I said to Rod, I think I'm healed. (...) They prayed for me just before Christmas and I had planned to shut my business into January when I started voicing that I had no pain. It was a week out from closing my business. I'd made an announcement to the town that I was closing. And since then I've felt the nerves healing. They are a little sensitive but I get no pain. And I can chew. I can chew nuts. I have not been able to eat anything solid for over a decade. I haven't had that proper chewing action but I have that now.(...) It's actually quite phenomenal. I tell everybody now, everybody that walks into my shop, being a small town, they knew me, knew me well. And many of them had seen me in a terrible state and they're all asking and I'm going, well, I'm healed. I said I was prayed for and I got healed.(...) My memory is still a leave it shot from the morphine but that's getting better and better. But my energy's back and my drive to live life is back. And yeah, I'm doing everything that I want to do again. I haven't even had Panadol since. (...) But looking back I know that the Lord was right there the whole time. I hope one day that someone who hears my story will be encouraged and know that there is healing available. You can only put it down to God.