Sunday, February 10, 2013

PSA: Dr. Sheffield’s 8 simple steps for avoiding a mandibular fracture

2012-08-02 001 2012-08-02 006

I usually post more trivial things on my blog, but every so often, I feel it my duty as a health care provider to provide some helpful information to the general public. I’ve been seeing a lot of mandibular fractures lately, so thought I could share some ways to avoid a broken jaw. This information is gathered from my experiences after almost four years of residency and seeing hundreds of broken faces.

1. Be a woman. Testosterone is hazardous to the integrity of your jaws.

2. Don’t drink, stay out past midnight, or go to bars. If you can avoid one, two, or even better, all three of these situations, your odds of fracture go down to almost 0%. Some say, “The Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight.” Well, so does the Guardian Angel of Faces.

3. If you find you must drink alcohol, you got stuck out too late, or in a bar, make sure you are very involved in other people’s lives/business. People who are “minding their own business” tend to get “sucker punched” almost uniformly. But, don’t be too friendly and offer another man a drink. For some reason they don’t like free beer from a friendly guy and you may end up with a mal-occlusion (bad bite).

4. Brush your teeth. People who have no teeth, who need to have no teeth and haven’t got around to extractions yet, or will one day likely have no teeth seem to break their jaws more often than their toothed peers.

5. Beware of people in steel-toed boots. They are sure to stomp you. People in normal-toed boots don’t seem compelled to do this like their steel-toed counterparts.

6. Be especially vigilant around roving groups of men. A jaw fracture rarely occurs in a fair fight. If you find yourself outnumbered, make sure you aren’t minding your own business because you are sure to be jumped, sucker punched, and likely stomped (and yes, by steel-toed boots).

7. Never let your friends roll you in a carpet. And if you happen to be a college freshman and this simply cannot be avoided, don’t let them stand you up vertically. Keep lying down to avoid breaking your inevitable fall with your chin.

8. If you are a nice/kind/sweet person who has managed to avoid all of the dangers listed above, you might consider keeping your distance from horses. They like to kick or head-butt nice people, often girls, who normally wouldn’t break their jaws and it seems that jaws and teeth are their favorite targets.

It is possible to break your jaw in other ways, but if you can follow these few simple suggestions odds are your face will remain relatively intact!

2 comments:

Camber said...

Erin, you're hilarious.

Unknown said...

I have to catch up on your words of wisdom. These particular word shoulds be publicly posted :) HI-larous but so true!