A Canadian college student, Javeria Wasim, has had her jaw wired shut for six weeks after attempting to eat a giant jawbreaker candy, forcing her onto an all-liquid diet. The incident occurred while she was shopping with a friend and decided to try the largest size of the candy, known for its hard texture, which in some cases can be as large as a snooker cue ball.
“We got a giant one, the biggest size they had,” Ms. Wasim recalled to People, saying that she and her friend even asked the shopkeeper if it was safe to bite into the candy: “‘Can we bite into this? The candy is literally called a jawbreaker.'”
Ms. Wasim felt an immediate pain in her jaw as she bit into the gumball. A chipped front tooth and a loose one hinted at further damage. Concerned, her friend called an ambulance. At the hospital, X-rays and a CT scan revealed two fractures in her jaw.
“I bit into it and only made a hole, and my jaw started to hurt,” she explained. “My friend looked over and said my tooth was chipped. It hurt bad, I was crying a lot when the ambulance came, and everything was blurry.”
Surgery and Recovery
The next day, doctors performed surgery to realign her jaw, inserting bars on her top and bottom gums to wire it shut for six weeks. The procedure lasted an hour. Ms. Wasim, now traumatized by the incident, says she may never eat candy again.
“I used to have them as a little kid,” she said. “I’ve seen videos of people biting into the small ones but never the big ones. You realize how important your mouth is—you use it for literally everything in your life. It has affected my life so much.”
Struggling with the challenges of a liquid diet and post-surgery side effects, Ms. Wasim now warns others to exercise caution. She advises only licking the candy, no matter how long it takes to finish: “You don’t need to bite into it.”
