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 :)