*Warning - Heavy post alert*
I've been umming and ahhing whether to
actually start this blog post. One because this process has already been going
on for quite a long time already (three years and counting) and didn’t really
know how to start when I’m already so far down the line into my treatment. And
two, I’m not even sure that anyone would be remotely interested in little old
me and my jaw.
However, I’ve decided to bite the bullet
and just start typing about my jaw surgery journey as I’d quite like to look
back on this one day and remember the hefty process I went through.
I suppose we start from the beginning, when
I was a pre-teen around 11/12 my dentist told me that I needed braces,
obviously at this age you’re actually excited to have them because everyone
else at school was having them. Even cooler for me because I was the first out
of my friends to have them put one, so in a way I was the guinea pig of our
friendship group. I had the typical train track braces on for about four years
as well having four teeth out due to overcrowding (I have a small jaw and too many teeth!)
Halfway through my treatment my orthodontist as well as my regular dentist
explained that I had something called an ‘open bite’ which is where your front
teeth don’t actually touch, they told me that I would have to have surgery to
correct this. But being a 13 year old who has never has any type of surgery I
freaked and declined the opportunity to consider surgery (even if I had accepted I
would still have to wait until my body had stopped growing to even start the
process of surgery) and just went on my day to day life struggling to bite into
everyday foods like sandwiches and pizza, at least I knew I wasn’t having to
have surgery.
Fast forward a few years and I’ve finished
school, braces have come off and entered the working world. I started to
experience pain and more overcrowding in my mouth, this was due to my wisdom
teeth starting to make an appearance but they were growing sideways and forcing
all my other teeth closer together. But still, it wasn’t enough of a drastic
change for me to change my mind about surgery even though It was always an
option, as my dentist had pointed out to me every time I visited her.
As I grew older, I noticed my issues with
my jaw a lot more and started to come round to the idea of surgery. Like I said
earlier I struggled to bite with my front set of teeth which this led to me
biting quite hard on my back molars to compensate my lack of bite at the front,
as time went on the strain on my back teeth and my jaw would leave me in agony.
I was noticing more about my jaw not feeling right, my lips only meet when I
make a conscious effort to do so, meaning that most of the time I breathe
through my mouth. I could no longer look at pictures of my side profile; my
upper front teeth had grown on an angle where they were tilted backwards at the
gum line causing my open bite to be worse. Long story short I went back to my
dentist and asked about the surgery.
Once all my dentist referrals were complete
I firstly had to go on a waiting list to have my four wisdom teeth removed and because of the way they had grown I had to
go under general anaesthesia which made me face my fear of surgery. After a lot of crying to my mum in those sexy
gowns and stockings I was wheeled into the operating theatre and then what felt
like 20 minutes I awoke in the recovery room next to what I though was Arg from
TOWIE (A British reality show), it was probably the anaesthetic to be honest…
I’m now more than three years into my treatment
and I’m now on the home stretch to finally having my jaws realigned as well as
a genioplasty on the 27th January 2017.
Keep
checking back for more posts of my journey! Especially the one when I was
supposed to have my surgery in November 2016!
Wherever you may be during the road to jaw surgery, I'd love to hear about your journey, or even tips/recipes you may of used during your recovery!
xx
