No surgery yet! But some mushy stuff

My surgery date has been and gone and, unfortunately, there was no surgery. I had my adjustment last week and my orthodontist has said that he has been talking with my surgeon, he is recovering and is already back at work but surgery is off the plate for him for now. They will contact me when they have a new date.

I'm a bit bummed about this, I was really looking forward to surgery - it is something that I've looked forward to for quite a long time now. However, it is also a blessing because it was really bad timing with my studies. I am thankful that I will still be getting surgery at some point, I am so extremely lucky that I have this opportunity and I am grateful for it every day.

I have been wanting to write a post for a while now on why I am getting jaw surgery and what it means to me, but I have been putting it off and putting it off... It is important to me to write down everything that I wanted to say and exactly how I wanted to say it, and trying to get this bit right has scared me a bit.

So here goes....

The reasons I want to get surgery:

- So I am able to eat my food properly. 

This one didn't really hit me until my late teens, I have never been able to eat food properly. Have an open bite makes it difficult to bite through pretty much anything. For years my mum made me lettuce sandwiches and they were literally the bane of my existence, I could not bite through them. I actually had to use my tongue as my bottom teeth so I could break it up. When I recently told my mum this she said "well why didn't you ever say anything?!", so really it was self-imposed haha. In all seriousness though, eating is such a challenge for me, I feel extremely self-conscious eating in front of people because often I can't control what will happen. Food sometimes slips out of my mouth, and I learnt the hard way to never ever ever bite into anything in front of someone because sometimes I can't bite completely through it and I'll have to take it out and break it up so I can eat it... not the most appetizing thing for others to watch. I'll generally make a joke out of it to make light of the situation, even when I am completely and utterly mortified... people are generally pretty cool about it, and my friends are used it I think. I am looking forward to having my bite fixed so that I can bite through things and be able to control my food when I eat it!!

- So I can talk correctly.

Having a gap between my teeth means I lisp quite a lot. It also means I can't pronounce a lot of words properly and people can find it hard to understand me properly. Before I got braces, my teeth didn't have as big of a gap between them. I was pretty used to my teeth the way they were and talking wasn't too much of a problem. It still bothered me a bit, but people could generally understand what I was saying. When my braces were put on, it opened up the gap between my teeth and changed my whole bite. For a few months people found it quite hard to understand what I was saying as I was getting used to talking with my new mouth, especially being 21st season which meant lots of parties in bars with loud music. Trying to talk normally was hard enough, but trying to talk over loud music was nearly impossible. I tried to find the humour in it, but sometimes it was really frustrating. I am hoping that once my teeth in the front meet, I will no longer have a lisp!

- So I can stop spitting EVERYWHERE...

I literally spit on everyone and everything. It is ridiculous. I am like a water fountain. Most of the time I can laugh about it, my friends are pretty used to it and can generally see the humour in the situation. Sometimes it is just embarrassing and I would like the ground to swallow me up. I am really hoping that this will stop after surgery.... For now, beware.

- To feel comfortable about my appearance.

Let's face it. One of the main reasons most of us get jaw surgery is to change the way we look. I know that especially for people with underbites, it can look really unattractive and make you feel extremely self-conscious. It is also rather masculine which sucks for women having to deal with one. 

I am now in my early 20s and looking back at my teenage years it was a pretty awful thing to have to deal with. Reading some of the other blogs out there I have realised that I am lucky for never being teased because of the way I looked like so many people with jaw disfigurements have been. It was hard enough for me even when I wasn't being teased! I spent a good 10 years thinking I was ugly and didn't deserve to have any friends, which is not the nicest mindset to be in, and I still struggle to not think this way even today. I know that a lot of teenagers feel this way and I know I wasn't alone, but spending the entire time thinking that my jaw disfigurement was so horrific and that it made me ugly so no boys would ever want to go out with me was pretty traumatic. (yeah, I was quite a dramatic teenager haha). Now that I am more mature (hah!) and know that personality kicks way more ass than looks ever will, I feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I don't think I am ugly, and if someone chooses to judge me on my looks instead of getting to know me first then I don't really want to know them anyway. I am a firm believer in personality shining through!

I know this probably doesn't make sense then when I say that I still feel self-conscious when I look in the mirror or when someone is taking a photo of me, but being self-conscious about something is different from feeling ugly. I do have a disfigurement, it does make my face look out of proportion, and I do want to get it corrected. I have seen several blog posts and articles of people that have undergone jaw surgery and they have described the experience of having a jaw disfigurement as 'having the wrong face'. This is precisely how it feels. My face is not aligned how it is supposed to be.

It is really frustrating trying to explain to people how it feels to have a jaw disfigurement as it is really hard to understand unless you have had one. Whenever I have tried to explain it to my friends and family they say "Oh, but you look normal". This is because they are used to my appearance now, so for them it IS normal. It's normal for me too, but then I know what to look for too.

This jaw surgery is something I have been waiting a long time for. I used to think that having jaw surgery would 'fix' everything in my life, and even though I know now that that's not true I do feel like it will change a lot for me in ways I don't even realise yet.

I know this will change the way I look, and yes I feel guilty for being happy about this and wanting to look different. But is it really so wrong that I want to be happy with my appearance? I know surgery seems like such a drastic measure, and it is. I do not condone cosmetic surgery (which this is not). This is first and for-most a functional problem for me that has unfortunately affected my appearance, and by fixing the functional problems my appearance will change. It is an effect of the surgery, but not the sole goal. Who knows, I may think I'm even worse looking after surgery, I'll just have to deal with it! :P

So there's the mushy stuff... Don't get me wrong, I know there was a lot of negativity in this post. But believe it or not I am thoroughly enjoying my whole jaw surgery experience, and having this blogging platform has been a godsend. Here's to positivity from here on out. There are so many great blogs out there that have helped me get this far so thank you! And if you are reading this, thank you too :)

Until next time!

It's taken 14 months....

.... and I finally get some elastics.

In other news, today is my 14-month braces anniversary! Yay!

I was wondering when the elastics would come along.... well today they did. I didn't know that I have to take them out every time I eat, and this is not good because I am someone who likes to eat! Nevermind, I am sure I can deal with it.

Anyway, adjustment was good. Moved up another wire on the top, got a power-chain that goes alllllllllll the way around:

And here's one of the elastic:

And I also got a copy of my x-ray from last time!

See the comparison to pre-braces:

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

And here's another comparison:

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

Some bad news...

So you know how I was all worried about revealing my date of surgery? I rang my surgeons practice last week to book my first pre-surgery appointment (which has to be 5 weeks before surgery) and they shared the bad news with me. Unfortunately my surgeon has been in a skiing accident, so bad that he had to have surgery. I believe he is still in hospital as we speak.

He will most likely be better by the time my surgery date rolls around, 23rd of September, however he will probably still be catching up on all of the surgeries he will have missed out on. At the hospital I am going through, he only does one surgery per month so there will be at least one that he has missed.

I am not too worried though, the 23rd September is right in the middle of uni for me so hopefully if it gets pushed back it gets pushed back past uni and past exams so I can recover without having to worry about all the work I'm missing out on! And maybe it will mean less time in braces afterwards :)

My next adjustment is July 30th so hopefully they will have more information by then! Wish me luck!

Oh and as a side note, I turned 22 on the weekend :) Happy birthday to me!

Yet Another Adjustment

Hello all,

So today I had another visit with Dr. P. It's the first adjustment since my second meeting with the surgeon (which was highly uneventful, ended up just signing some paperwork and having some x-rays. Okay the x-rays were quite exciting). Though he was a bit more clear about what he wants done before surgery, in particular the movement of the lateral incisors.

I created a picture (in paint, woo!) of how I understand it:

So the red lines indicate where the surgeon wants to cut so he can move the front section down and close my open bite. However the lateral incisors seem to be a bit tilted side-ways and the roots are in the way of the cutting path. Dr. P's approach was to break off the brackets on the lateral incisors and re-position them on an angle. This means that when the arch wire is put back on, the teeth would want to move in the direction of the yellow arrows. The problem with this is basic physics - the tooth wants to rotate around it's centre of gravity (being approx where the purple dot is) the root rotating in the direction of the orange arrow. This is not ideal as it doesn't really solve the problem of creating a space for the surgeon to cut.

The solution is to whack a wire (shown in grey) around the front four teeth to keep them together, thereby moving the centre of rotation down to where the bracket is attached to the tooth. The parts of the teeth that show stay where they are, while the roots rotate in and out of the way:

Resulting in lot's of room for the surgeon to chop chop chop away:

Here is a photo of the funky wire configuration (that sits behind the arch wire):

And a photo to illustrate the rotated bracket and resulting curved wire (shown by the green arrow and red lines):

The blue arrow is showing the gap that has already appeared since this morning...

As you can imagine, they are pretty sore. But nothing I haven't dealt with before! :)

I Have A Date! ... For Surgery ;)

I actually met with the surgeon on April 9th... On that appointment I also had spacers put in, and then metal bands on the back teeth put on a week later on April 15th. I had another adjustment a few days ago on May 21st. My updating has been a little slack, sorry.. :P

I'll talk about my meeting with the surgeon later, for now I'll talk about my last adjustment.

I moved up a wire size on the top and am now on a square wire. The bottom is still on the circular wire, but the last one :) I'll go up to square at my next appointment. Dr. P. was saying that there is two grades of square wires to go through... but a friend of mine who also has braces says that his orthodontist says there is only one. So we'll see what happens. Either way I am almost there!!

And here are some more creepy photos...

Once I have moved up to the highest wire grade, Dr. P. will start moving my top teeth around to centre my midline. Everything is pretty straight though which I'm happy with :D

My second premolar on the bottom left has had to have another wire ligature and power chain put on to try and get rid of the rotation. This has happened previously but hopefully it behaves itself this time. It has been causing me a bit of trouble, it's been quite painful to eat on and I've been using my other side mainly. You can see the fancy set-up in the second to last photo above.

As you can see the second lot of metal bands have been put on my very back teeth. This has been quite an adventure.... During the first week they were on they made absolute mince-meat of the inside of my cheeks, dental wax wasn't much use unfortunately. That combined with the pain of having all four molars moving was not particularly pleasant. But I survived! It didn't hinder my eating for much longer than normal, only a few days.

And now for the exciting bit.... MEETING THE SURGEON!!

Hopefully I haven't forgotten all of it... it was more than a month ago. That'll teach me for not updating my blog. I'll refer to the surgeon as Dr. W. in my posts from now on.

I had been warned by Dr. P. that he was a little strange and might take a bit of getting used to. However I didn't find this the case at all. We were kept waiting for at least an hour in the waiting room as he was taking longer with his earlier patients, but this seems to me to be a good sign as he doesn't obviously rush things and likes to take his time doing consultations properly!

Once my time finally came around, Dr. W. asked me a couple of questions - including getting me to say a sentence which had lots of s words in it! Thanks lisp! He also spent about 15 minutes measuring every aspect of my face I could possibly imagine. Then he told me his plan.

His proposed plan is to do surgery on both jaws. The bottom jaw will be moved back, I am not sure of the exact measurements but hopefully I'll get them with the surgery plan that's coming in the mail. My top jaw will be getting moved forward and down to meet my top jaw correctly (using the Le Fort Osteotomy I believe). He also says there is a possibility of needing my top jaw widened, which will also be carried out in the same procedure. I think this involved splitting my jaw down the centre which seems pretty scary. If that happens then I'm pretty sure my maxilla will be split into at least 3 pieces.... He says there is also the possibility I will need a bone graft, which would be taken from my hip.

So overall a pretty intense meeting you could say.

I have also been given a surgery date! I'm not going to give the exact day because I don't want to jinx it.. though I'm pretty sure I already have by telling everyone I know. Haha. It's closer than I thought it would be - later this year so pretty soon! It's going to mess with uni a bit but I'll just have to deal with that when it comes. I am just SO EXCITED!!!!

So for now I am focussing on getting good grades at uni, and also on getting fit and healthy for my surgery so I can recover as quickly as I possibly can! Wish me luck! My next adjustment is on June 25th :)

A Small Milestone

Here is a photo of a friend and I at said friend's 21st:

I'm SMILING. FULLY. IN A PHOTO. WILLINGLY. AND I LIKE THE PHOTO.

I think this is the first time this has ever happened!

:D

Comparisons

Hello! Long time, no see. I have been procrastinating doing a new post... but here I finally am. With some comparison photos.

I think that I have had one adjustment since my last post, everything went fine, I just moved up another wire gauge on the top. No fancy rubber fittings or springs this time! The adjustment before that one was the most painful by far, it took about 2-3 weeks to get back to normal. Every time I drank something I would get shooting pains up into my gums around that top lateral incisor that has been getting pulled forward into line. But it ended up getting better and here we are today. :)

So, photos! I finally got around to getting my photos from my old laptop, and have put together a comparison:

I can't believe how much they have changed! I know in my last post I was complaining about how it hardly seems like they have moved at all, but here is the proof they have. I am so happy!

Already I am beginning to feel more confident, I always new I was self conscious about my teeth but I never realised how badly they were affecting my self-esteem. I feel a lot more comfortable smiling around people now and not afraid of showing my teeth. Who knows, I may feel okay smiling for photos soon! But let's not get ahead of ourselves :P

More exciting news - I am meeting with the surgeon on the 9th April!

This will be to discuss the surgery, ask him questions, and I'm guessing for him to actually get an idea of what he's dealing with. I AM SO EXCITED!!