A woman has claimed she had to have her jaw replaced with prosthetic joints after stretching her mouth to eat a KFC stacked burger.
Holly Strevens, 34, from the port city of Portsmouth, has had five operations and 12 screws on the left side of her mouth after her jaw dislocated when eating a chicken burger topped with a hash brown.
The mother-of-one was diagnosed with temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ) which is a disorder of the jaw muscles and nerves caused by injury or inflammation to the connection between the jawbone and the skull.
Holly said she now hopes to have the right side of her jaw replaced as she suffers chronic pain daily that lead to non-epileptic seizures.
She said: ‘I feel angry that this has happened but it can happen to anyone who opens their mouth too wide.
‘I was healthy before eating my KFC burger with no underlying health issues. TMJ just came from nowhere.
I was eating a KFC at home whilst watching the TV and all of a sudden I had a loud pop noise. It was my left jaw joint.
‘It looked normal but it felt horrendous and kept “locking and unlocking”. I must have stretched my mouth too wide when biting the burger.’
Holly said she hopes fast-food restaurants reduce the size of their burgers to prevent this from happening to someone else.
She states her life has been ‘ruined’ as she is constantly in pain and has non-epileptic seizures. She is unable to eat an apple, anything ‘chewy’ or hard due to the pain.
‘I developed arthritis in my left jaw too with cysts on the joint before the jaw replacement.’
Three years after the incident, Holly had open-joint arthroplasty of the jaw- an incision was made in the skin to expose the jaw joint. The surgeon replaced her tissue with an artificial disc in July 2017.
Sadly, her condition didn’t improve so Holly was forced to have the left side of her jaw replaced. She has been left with a scar from her ear lobe to her eyebrow level.
Holly adds: ‘I regret eating the burger. It has changed my life. I am now classed as disabled and I have lost my independence completely.
‘My mental health has declined and I have anxiety because I might have a seizure when I am alone. I am hoping to get the right side of my jaw replaced to put an end to the relentless chronic pain.’