Day 462: Free at Last!

This is a short update cause I'm on my phone, but... the braces are off! Yesterday I went and they popped those suckers right off of my teeth. For those of you playing along at home, I'd had the braces for about 900 days (not including the time I had them as a kid), so it's a big relief.

Getting braces off is relatively simple, but it kinda hurts. And when they pull out the power tools to get the glue off, that kinda really hurts. But, all worth it in the end. I'm enjoying my two days of absolute freedom before I go in tomorrow and get my non-permanent appliances (yes plural, of course my retainer situation would be complicated). Best part of yesterday? Flossing! Flossing with braces is a nightmare, I hated it, so that's my favorite thing right now. More updates after tomorrow! Xo Beth

Day 365: Has It Only Been One Year?

Seems like it's been 4 or 5 at least! About this time last year, I was out of recovery and projectile vomiting blood all over my hospital bed... oh, the memories :)

8/23/11

Day 330: No More Surgeries!

Part I: Dr. Voorhees
I visited with the good doctor on July 9 and was most relieved to hear that he's not recommending surgery at this point, which is good since it was probably not a good option financially or emotionally. He did sign my physical therapy referral to see Jeff at North Star Manual Therapy and I'll go see Dr. Voorhees again in a month just to say "What's Up?!"

Part II: Dr. Ramsay
I saw Dr. Ramsay this morning (7/19), and I think he was a little off-put by how well the physical therapy seems to be going (he had declined to sign my referral form, resulting in the postponement of my initial appointment). But, he feels confident that the orthodontia should be able to close the right front quadrant. He set me up with a new rubber band formation, put a kink in my lower wire, and sent me on my way.

Sidebar: Excerpt from my phone conversation with Jared today:
Me: I'm giving him three more months - he's got until October and then I'm just going to have him take them off. I am SO SICK of being in braces (for those of you keeping track, I've had braces for a little over 8 years total, or 1/3 of my entire life). 
Jared: Well... (obviously deliberating so he can choose his words wisely) let's just... cross that bridge when we get there...
Apparently, being in a relationship with me is somewhat akin to learning how to be a hostage negotiator. 

Part III: Jeff, the physical therapist
Jeff is my ultrafabulous physical therapist. He's working to get my muscles to stop being little punks and just do what they should. Oh, and I have all these different exercises I'm supposed to do, too. It's never fun, and sometimes painful, but I think it's helping. Here are a few highlights:

1. My cervical spine is a little tilted, so he's fixing that himself through manual therapy
2. I tip my head back when I open my mouth, so I get to do embarrassing double-chin inducing exercises to work on that.
3. My lateral pterygoid is all sorts of angry and bitter. Jeff "massages" them on each side during my visits - he has to go in through my mouth! It's the most painful thing ever. And each week, as he's able to get further up into it, it gets more and more painful!

Lateral pterygoid massage

My favorite lesson in all this is as follows: being invested in my own health care. I've got a guy looking at the bones, a guy looking at the teeth, and a guy looking at the muscles. But who has to go home and live with the consequences of everything those guys do? Me! So I'm learning it's OK to speak up and question or challenge their methods or ideas as long as I do it respectfully. Contrary to my culturally implanted instinct, doctors do not know everything.

They do know some stuff though, so I guess I'll let them stick around.

Day 318: Last braces payment

47 days before a full year after my surgery, and also the day of my last braces payment EVER! It's half awesome, because I will now be $200 a month richer, but it's half bad because I'm still wearing them, and I was hoping to make a payment without them actually on, but oh well *shrug*

I was supposed to have my models appointment today, but it got pushed back to Monday, and then my manual therapy (physical therapy for the muscles in my jaw) appointment is on Tuesday. Super fun :)

Hope everybody had a good 4th of July!

10 Months Post-Op: You've Got to Be Kidding Me

I went in for my 6-month check up about 2 weeks ago, expecting Dr. Voorhees to make a joke about the fact that I was still in braces, tell me everything looked fine, and that he'd see me in a year.

That is not what happened. Here's what did:

Dr. Voorhees spent a solid 3-5 minutes having me bite down, relax, bite down, open, bite down (and so on), and then him sitting back in his chair with a guarded yet grim face. Things are not going as well as he'd hoped. Despite wearing my palate retainer this whole time, the bones on the right side (that pesky right side that's never quite felt right) seem to have shifted. He's not sure exactly what has happened, and won't have a clear picture until he does a work-up. He'll - or more realistically, one of the surgery techs will - take x-rays and molds. For those of you paying attention, this is essentially starting over at the beginning, with a consultation, even though it's post-op. So I go see him/aforementioned surgery techs on July 5 to do all that. Oh, boy

10 Months Post-Op Photo

He'll then perform a model surgery (surgery on the models he'll make from taking my molds) and see what's to be done. At this preliminary stage, before he has completely ALL the facts, here are some of the options:

1. He re-surgeries the maxilla on the horizontal plane, which is essentially a third of the original surgery.
2. He and Dr. Ramsay work together with some sort of splint situation to see if they can pull the bones back into place without surgery.
3. I say "No way, Jose," Dr. Ramsay does the best he can with braces and we all keep our fingers crossed that the headaches don't come back and the whole thing doesn't just slide back to where it was in an avalanche of frustration and muscles who have nothing better to do than make my life miserable. Muscles are jerks and I hate them.

You can see I'm handling this with a high level of maturity for which the situation obviously calls.

Anyway, now I'm playing the waiting game until mid-July, when everyone will have a better idea of what's going on. I'm going to see a physical therapist to see about the muscle surrounding the situation and if some tightness (or a lot of tightness) may be pulling the bones back.

At this point, the whole situation feels a little like a really uninteresting sitcom. I'll keep you guys posted after I hear back in July.

Day 177: Close Enough to 6 Months

6 months ago, Jared & I woke up at 5am, drove to the hospital, and waited patiently until the anesthesiology nurse came in to roll me to the OR. I still remember a few things about that day very vividly, and some only when I think about them really hard. Here's what's up 6 months later, which is generally considered the "it" point for this surgery. I'll start with the cons so I can end on a positive note.

Cons:

Open bite on the right side

• The lower left part of my chin/lip area is still dead. I say dead and not numb, because I get tingly when I poke at it, but it's not an altogether pleasant sensation, so I try not to. This is probably permanent, but it's not as bothersome as it might seem, probably mostly because for a good 2 months after the surgery I was completely numb in a larger region around the same area. The plate removal (see October 21) alleviated a lot of that, so I feel much more comfortable with this amount of nerve damage.
• My upper gums are still numb. This is really only weird when I floss, and sometimes when I eat something like chips and they get caught in my braces and poke up there. (Don't tell my orthodontist I eat chips, though.)
• I'm still wearing the braces and Dr. Ramsay still doesn't know when he'll be able to take them off. I still have an open bite on the right side of my mouth, which we're currently pulling together with elastics. Except this week. I noticed that the top tooth #6 (see that handy chart over there) was really loose from the elastics, so we're cooling it to let it settle in a little. If you haven't been able to tell from this post, or my last several, I am beginning to loathe my braces. They were fun or whatever for awhile, but it's been almost 2 years, and I'm about ready to have my teeth back.
• We're still making a large amount of medical payments every month (read: 50% of my monthly salary) and will owe about a third of my yearly salary in February of 2013 for the last payment.

Now for the pros
*caveat: more of the pros will probably be obvious once I get my braces off and everything has settled down with that

• I can breathe so much better than before. I think I've said it before, but I can't actually tell at this point, I just remember the feeling from the hospital room right after I had woken up. It's not just my airway in my throat that's opened up, my nasal area is much roomier, now too, so that's nice.
• I have full jaw opening capacities. One of the weirdest parts about surgery like this is how much you don't notice when it's happening. Like, after the surgery, I was wearing that huge splint and I was rubber banded all the time and I didn't even realize, I couldn't open my jaw even a finger's width. (FYI, the normal/good range is three fingers, stacked on top of one another - I can do about three and a half now). It took a long time to get that mobility back, but it's not something that feels strange or limiting at the time, except with yawning. I remember yawning being really uncomfortable... now I can express my boredom with ease, so that's good.
•  The results of the surgery from an oral surgery point of view were about as positive as they could have been. My teeth are the most occluded they've ever been, and it doesn't even feel weird anymore that my lower front teeth touch my upper ones when I shut my mouth. That took a long time to get used to.
• I've only had 1 or 2 headaches since the surgery, and like Jared always reminds me "even normal people get headaches". The biggest test for this will be after I get my braces off though, and life returns to normal, really.
• The surgery is over. This sounds like a weird and obvious statement, but I think I just fully realized it the other day. Something like this is so massive and just takes over your life, and it's such a relief so have it be behind me. And it's a little bit more behind me every day, which is just awesome. 
• Aside from the braces and my current haircut - both of which I never expected the surgery to fix, I'm not as self-conscious about photos anymore. My chin and jaw look like a normal person's.

So, that's what's up 6 months after the surgery. I probably won't update again until I get the braces off or until something major happens, or if I just get bored one night... thanks for reading :D

Day 134: Palate Retainer Blues

Happy New Year!

I have a baby cold right now, and it's the first time I've been sick since I stopped teaching in December of 2010, and boy, does it suck to be sick when you have a retainer in. At first, the retainer didn't bother me at all. Actually, at first, I was in love with the retainer because it saved me from the splint. Now, I've come to see its dark side... haha just kidding, but really, it's getting annoying. It's just becoming so much more comfortable when the retainer is out (for when I eat, etc.) But, I don't want to mess anything up just because I didn't want to wear a stupid retainer for a few more months, you know? The worst part about that is that even though I see the light at the end of the braces tunnel, what do you have to wear when you get your braces off? A retainer! So I'll be right back in the same boat, just able to take better pictures, which is the positive thought I've been keeping in my brain lately.

Really, I shouldn't complain though, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to get my face broken :D

I promised awhile back that I'd post an outline of the costs, and after spending 30 minutes just now typing it all out, and getting the perfect balance of facts and witty remarks, I have decided to take back that offer. If you're curious about the costs because you're having the surgery yourself, or because you're just nosy (hey, don't worry about it, I'm nosy, too) I'd be happy to talk with you about it (as well as my fun fun adventures with the insurance company) one-on-one, but I'm thinking now that some of the financial stuff should just be kept off the internets at large. Feel free to email me at BethLauren22[at]gmail[dot]com and we can chat about it.