Jaw Surgery

So I haven't blogged for a while! Sorry!! Just after my last post I underwent jaw surgery. It sucked (no pun intended :-)

Long story short, I love love love teeth and when I look at anyone for the first time I usually have something good to say about their teeth. Sometimes I even read about teeth online when I have free time. So I love all things about teeth and so you would think that I would take care of mine RIGHT?

No- I didn't wear my retainer post 2 years of braces as a teenager, I am a bad brusher, don't even ask me about flossing. But I LOVE my teeth because I just NEVER get cavities and what's not to love about that?

Anyway, I went to the Whitsundays (Great barrier reef) for my 10- year anniversary afterwards while looking at the pictures I saw a picture of me smiling my heart out and realised my gummy smile has gotten pretty bad. Yes, click on the picture and zoom in - that is a row of gums!

 So I promptly interviewed about 6 orthodontists... thinking maybe a retainer at night or invisalign. After the first 5 told me 2 years of braces + jaw surgery I decided all orthodontists in Australia are charlatans and then sat on the decision for a while. I read blogs, looked online, and then interviewed one last orthodontist (the most expensive I might add), who took all these pictures of my face and profile and then sat me down and did a 10 minute power point presentation where he showed me where my jaw was wrong and how they would fix it and how I would look and then sent me home with a CD so I could review his procedure at home.

He spent and extra 20 minutes giving me a full diagnosis while the other orthodontists met me for the first time, took a quick look and rattled off the same solution...This orthodontist is also a little OCD and gets impatient with his staff when they do not work efficient. He is an extreme perfectionist and so I decided this is EXACTLY the person I want to work with.

I did my first consultation in October, then in November I had to get ready for the braces. Impressions, x-rays, replacing a cap that I had on my front tooth. (I knocked out my front tooth as a 9 year old and the cap was still holding strong 20 years later- but since we were putting braces on we decided to replace it so it would be strong).

Stan was not happy about the braces option so I paid double and got them on the inside of my teeth (this is called Lingual braces) They are more expensive because they are a massive pain for the orthodontist. Everything is done backwards and there is also less surface to stick the braces to from the inside, so it can get quite tricky.  All in all I LOVED lingual braces, as my smile started to look better and better and people couldn't put their finger on what was different (note: picture off the Internet).

Anyway, the plan was to have braces on for 1 year then do the jaw surgery and then keep the braces on for 6 more months. We moved the jaw surgery up to mid-October for some reason and in hindsight this was good as it gave me more time to recover. 

The surgery was good- I was asleep and can't remember anything. My surgeon was the best in Melbourne and even the hospital staff who would bring me water all commented how lucky I was to have him. My recovery was awful, but compared to just about everyone else who has done it, it was awesome. I didn't have any complications, I got feeling back in my face, my swelling went down quickly, I weaned of medicine very quickly and so I really shouldn't complain, but seriously I shutter at the thought of anyone ever doing jaw surgery in the future. 

I lost a lot of weight (got down to 105 lbs), and I wasn't going in with much (115lbs). I was so hungry and tired that I spent almost 6 weeks straight sleeping- it was like hibernating. I wanted to eat, but it took so much effort and time to suck 1 cup of soup that I just didn't have the energy.  I was cold a lot too- which was odd because we were going into the summer. 

The scariest part of the whole surgery was when my kids came home from school with gastro. I was worried if I caught it and needed to vomit I would drowned in my vomit because my mouth was wired shut. As fate would have it I did catch it, but because I was eating so little to begin with I only dry-heaved. 

Anyway, it is now 6 months post surgery and I have two months left of braces. I get them off in June. I don't look much different- some people look really different after jaw surgery- I look the same, but my teeth look better!