| JAW SURGERY Home > Surgery |
| Descriptions on this page could be a little graphic. |
| So yeah, Jaw surgery. This is my "before" x-ray. You can see the Class 3 underbite and kinda the flat profile that my skull had. You would think that it would be difficult to eat with my front incisors missing each other by over a quarter inch. Well I suppose it was. However, dealing with it for almost 20 years, I had naturally figured out my own ways to chew and eat. My molars still touched kinda so I could grind things up pretty normally. But when it came to tearing something off like a piece of bread or whatnot, I would have to use my tongue and push whatever it was against my upper incisors to bite it off. (somewhat like if you had to push a piece of wood upward into a splitting maul, instead of letting the maul do the work) Not saying that I could do push ups with my tongue (lol) but those muscles had to be pretty damn strong when you think of powering my teeth through an overloaded subway sandwich. But I must say that the underbite did have its benefits. I was able to master various animal calls especially the warning call of a whitetail deer, songbird whistling and osprey calls (all of which were successful in calling in animals). But there was no way I could live with my teeth like that and still have a good quality of life in my older years. They predicted that the majority of my teeth would have cracked and broken up by the time I had reached 40 years. This was because my teeth were aligned in a way that they hit tip-to-tip rather than fitting into the natural grooves. So surgery was to be done! I had known about it since 2nd grade. They had to wait for me to stop growing first. So when I turned 18 the old orthodontic wheels started turning again. Out with my wisdom teeth and in with the pallate expander (a semi permanent piece of aluminum that bridged the top of my mouth, had to crank it every once in a while to slowly widen my upper set of teeth.) I had to relearn how to talk a bit with the metal reducing my tongue movement by half. So that was on for a little over a year. But during that time my braces went on. First the top only for about 5-6 months then the bottom was added just before I went into the Bob in 2005. So I was officially a metal mouth. Every couple weeks (after I was out of the wilderness) I would go back for adjustments that would leave my teeth aching for days. A few teeth were pretty stubborn in moving. Tooth pain became something that didn't even phase me any more. What they were doing was aligning my top and bottom teeth seperate of each other so they would fit together in surgery. My heavy duty surgical wires went on and I was ready for surgery. I had freaked out about surgery about a year before it actually happened. Then I decided that there was nothing I could do about it, and just ask God to take care of me. The most agonizing part was the few weeks before surgery. I was just so bored and wanted to just get it over with. But I was calm, cool and collected when surgery came. I slept awesome the night before, woke up early and walked to the hospital to ease whatever nerves were a bit jumpy. (surgery was done in Missoula) Checked into the hospital with my mom for moral support and then went under at about 7:30 in the morning on January 18th. ------------------------------------------------ I woke up with a tube in my nose and down my throat. It was hard to breathe because my lips were almost swollen shut. I had to seperate them with my fingers to get the breath that my now conscious body needed. Nothing really hurt, except for that stupid tube in my throat when I swollowed. The worst part was that it always wanted to trigger my gag reflex. I had to write to the nurse because I couldn't speak with the tube in there. So I would try to write something but my half woozy mind couldn't quite put everything together yet. I wish I had that piece of paper to laugh at. After a bit I was wheeled to a hospital room. I just remember concentrating on not gaging on that tube. So I slept for a bit. Then my Mom came in and I felt pretty good. Finally, after a few decades they took that tube out and I could use it to suck the blood and stuff out of my mouth. (it was originally there to suck the blood out of my stomach so I wouldn't get sick.) I tried to drink as much water as possible. So I could get out of the hospital as soon as I could. The night was SUPER long. My roommate fell asleep with the Australian Open on and I didn't have the remote. So it was a long night of tennis. Except around 4:30 when some rather attractive female players had a couple matches. But still, everytime I fell asleep it would feel like I slept for about 3 hours, only to find out 40 minutes had passed. Around 7:00 I was unhooked from my I.V. I made a few laps walking around the wing of the hospital to get out of my defective and not very comfortable hospital bed. At 9:00 my doc (Dr. Clark Taylor) came in and said I could check out. (THANK GOD!!!!) We still had to hang out for a bit until the nurses got all the release papers signed. Then I was free!!!! Immediatly after leaving the hospital I headed over to Taylor's office to get my "after" x-ray. During surgery, he took a bone graft from my hip and some marrow and built my cheek bones to give my face a normal profile. A total of 19 screws and 4 plates all made of titanium will be with me for the rest of my life (and after for that matter.) You can see 4 screws on my bottom jaw just behind my teeth. The rest of the metal is behind my nose in the x-ray but mostly under my eyes in reality. They brought my upper jaw forward and straightened my off-center lower jaw. Right after surgery I had a pretty good overbite. But now it has settled back into a normal position. I was never wired shut, just had some heavy rubber bands. The trip back to Libby was grueling. I only had one tooth hitting after surgery. And it was digging tip to tip on a bi-cuspid. It hurt. So I tried to open my jaw to relieve the pain. But my jaw muscles got so tired of resisting those heavy rubber bands that I couldn't keep those two teeth separated. There was nothing I could do. It sucked. So that day pretty much went on in that fashion, icing my face as often as possible and low quality sleep. The surgery on my upper jaw messed with my sinus cavity a bit, so my nose was completely stuffed up with dried blood. But it was still dripping so I couldn't lay back or it would go down my throat. So I slept in an elevated position on the couch for a few nights. The day right after surgery was for sure the closest to hell the physical part of me had been in a long time. It was flat out miserable. But it got better over time. Mom would come out of the kitchen every two hours with some new concoction in a glass for me to consume. Nothing ever tasted bad, and even the liquid part of it was not getting old. My energy rebounded fast. Surgery was on Wednesday and by Saturday I felt like I needed to go tromp around in the woods. So I did. It sucked because my hip was bugging me, but it felt good to get out and actually do something. I kept on with the ice and swelling went down pretty fast. ---------------> ------------------> --------------> So I started class within a week of surgery, Only missed 2 days. This is February 9th, and I still don't have feeling from my right eye along side my nose to my lip...that is all numb still. It will eventually come back over quite a few months. The bottom pic was taken on the 7th and I would say that not all the swelling is gone yet. So now that the surgeon is done with his part, I have a long period of orthodontic "fine tuning" to endure. So as far as I'm concerned, this is only half over. I still have bands on and will have them for at least 9 more weeks. My braces will stay on for at least another 6 months. And I imagine I will have to have a retainer for life afterwards. OH THE JOY! yeah. Overall, I am pleased with what I see. My profile doesn't look so messed up like it used to. The slightly new look will take some getting used to when I look in the mirror. I have to relearn how to pronounce "s" and sounds like that because the dynamics of my mouth have changed from what my muscles remember. I have to relearn how to whistle and I can probably kiss the deer call good-bye. I have to get used to having my canines aligned. They are somewhat taller than the rest of my teeth and I can no longer move my bottom jaw side to side while my teeth are shut without them hitting. I can't wait to bite into an apple and feel the sheering power of my teeth that I have never experienced before. The latest before and after pictures.... Home > Surgery |
