one year later!

Today marks exactly one year since my surgery!

Updates:

I still have some numbness in my gums and my chin on one side.  It's normal to me now.  Not concerned or bothered.

I don't have any residual pain.  No grinding that I can tell.  No joint pain, no headaches.  No infections! :)

My teeth were in really bad shape at my dentist cleaning at about 6 months post-op - lots of build-up and tartar.  The hygienist said it was probably due to the liquid diet coating my teeth and not brushing well because of my sore joints.  Luckily last week at my one year cleaning she said it was an entirely different mouth and I got a clean bill of health.

I can't think of a darn other thing to say!  Except that I have no regrets.  Taken today:

PS. The procedures were BSSO and Lefort I.  Let me know if you have any other questions!

q & a

for some reason blogger is being stupid and not letting me reply to comments so let me respond to some questions that were posed to me in comments here:

who was your surgeon?

my surgeon was dr. gary warburton.  he's with the university of maryland medical center and dental school.  because he's a professor, he is also teaching maxillofacial surgery residents. i know you might get nervous about residents, but they were totally amazing, caring, competent, and professional.  i got to know them well and will actually miss them.  i had not one complaint!  i would whole-heartedly recommend dr. warburton and his team.  http://www.umm.edu/omsurg/team.htm

did you have surgery on both jaws?

yes i did.  my bottom jaw was more crooked than my top, but both were off kilter.  to have them line up the best i had to have both.  now, just my lips are crooked! :)

how much did your surgery cost?

without insurance coverage, it would have been about $51,000.  this is the main surgery itself including anesthesia, hospital stay, etc.  it does not include pre-surgery appointments or post-surgery check-ups, or my second surgery i needed to have because of my infection.

why did you not have braces?

i first went directly to dr. warburton (the surgeon) with my problem, after some online research, just for a consultation.  i did this because i'd been tossed around in referral process for several months - when i would present my problem, no one seemed to know exactly who to refer me to.  i ended up once at an ear nose and throat doctor, for example.  dr. warburton did confirm that my issue was something that was sometimes fixed with the type of surgery that he performs.  before anything else though, he sent me to his orthodontist colleague (dr. steven seigel in glen burnie, md) to check me out to see if ortho could fix my bite issue without surgery.  i already had like a decade of ortho when i was younger but they didn't address my asymmetry problem, or if they did, it didn't work.  my mom doesn't recall them really mentioning working on asymmetry, rather they were trying to widen my jaw.  in fact, my previous orthodontia may have contributed to worsening my asymmetry.

anyway, i did have nice straight teeth.  dr. seigel took a load of xrays and molds and concluded that my problem could not be fixed with orthodontia alone and it would require surgery.  he also decided that it would be an option for me to choose to have braces or not.  with braces, he said, i would get a more perfect result.  the main reason being, things could be tweaked post surgery to line it all up perfectly.  but he felt that braces would not be required and i would get a good result without them.  i was lucky in this way because my teeth would still line up well after the surgical movement.  i think this is because of the axis on which they moved my jaws (up and down) is different than those of you that have over and under bites (forward and back).  based on the cost of braces, time involved, and pure annoyance and vanity factors, i chose not to.  also, i figured i could have braces later in life if i was dissatisfied with the placement.  my teeth are slightly on a slant now in my mouth, because my previous braces as a teen made my teeth straight on a crooked jaw, but it's not super noticeable and it's not bothering me.

scar tissue

one hour before surgery - a marked woman (to confirm which side)

one day after surgery - a bit bloated and crooked again

now eight days out, my wound appears to be healing nicely.  stitches are starting to get loose and i cut one out myself tonight because it was bothering me.  while i was doing that, for the very first time, i noticed all the scar tissue from the first surgery around the perimeter of my mouth where my gum meets my lip and cheek tissue.

i hadn't really examined it before, i guess because that area was tender for so long, i avoided it, even just looking at it.  it has spidery white webs in it, some parts are thicker than others, some parts are higher and lower.  when you stretch it out (like by pulling out my lower lip) it becomes even more apparent that it is super webby scar tissue.  it's freaky looking and grossed me out.

i guess i was suprised to discover how irregular/unnatural it looks in comparison to the way that meeting point between the lip and gum did before.  and although of course i did know this already, it also is showing how the entire rims of my mouth on top and bottom were cut open.  it's clear that anyone who examines my teeth/mouth in the future will be able to tell i had something hardcore done!

adios, uno placo

today i had just one plate removed! they didn't want to do any more "invasion" than necessary and since i had only had problems with the one, that was the decision.

i'll be pissed if i get problems in another one in the future, haha, but this makes my recovery easier!  and i'll still be able to go, "hey feel my creepy plate" as a stupid human trick in the future.

unfortunately i could not keep or see the plate (i asked) because it is a biohazard thing and had to be sent off for testing because of it being "colonized."

the incision was about 3cm, everything went well, and they scraped out some infected tissue around the plate.

the cool thing seemed to be that they checked out my bone healing while they were "in there."  my bone cuts apparently healed awesomely and they said you could barely tell i'd had a BSSO.  i've got bone-healing SKILLZ.  :D

have some pain (duh) and some swelling (also duh).  it's cool though!  much less scary than last time:

leap day

am mid-air enroute to baltimore.  oh the technology.  reminds me of the fantastic louis ck bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk&feature=related

so my report time is 8:30am tomorrow for my little procedure.  i don't have much info about it like how long it takes, details about recovery, diet, etc.  i guess being the seasoned veteran that i am now i just wing it.

hey, i just realized because today is feb 29 and my original surgery date was october 28 - FOUR MONTHS now.  woooo. this means nothing really, except that time keeps on tickin into the future...faster and faster.

my moomoo is coming to baltimore again!  she is driving by herself again from detroit as i type this.  i heard it's raining a lot so that sucks.  she is such a good mommy!!  dear readers, please trust i am an adult and am capable to handle my business by myself. but she insisted to come keep me company and i can't say i don't appreciate it.  the plan is that as long as i'm recovering well we will be tourists in baltimore.  this will be nice.

i'm a hot mess

could it be related to my infection that i've had mega stomach flu-ish symptoms for almost 48 hours?  also i have some sort of sty or clogged duct in my eye.  AND, i got rear ended at a pretty decent speed this evening and now i have whiplash aching in my neck and back. dude.

my infection thing is stagnating. i think it was a good thing to expedite the surgery!

clockwork

preparing for my trip from el paso to dc and getting back and forth from dc to baltimore is a piece of cake now, i feel like i've done this soooo many times! :D

i forgot to mention that my surgeon told me that the recovery from this procedure is not nearly as bad as some of the stuff i read on the internet.  you evil internet!  i will go home the same day of the operation and i should be well recovered in a couple days.  of course you never know blah blah but this makes me feel so much better about going under the knife again.

my present infection is still there, i can see it a little myself but other people don't see it cause they don't know what normal looks like.  you can feel it if you touch my jawline.  (i forced my coworker to do it haha, because i wasn't sure if i was feeling it from the outside or inside myself, if that makes sense.)  but i am assuming in the next couple days the antibiotics should bring it back down to "normal."

what my surgeon said was that really the infection doesn't go away, it remains on the metal plate, when i think it's gone.  and that's why it keeps coming back and i need to get the plate removed.  the removal date got moved up because the infection came back quickly.  it is logical that it's not good to be on antibiotics  and having a continual infection for an extended period of time.

having gone through such an intense experience for the previous surgery, and after hearing about the much easier recovery for this one, i'm super "meh" about it.  a walk in the park!  am a little stressed at having to schedule all the logistics last minute but everything will fall into place as everything eventually does.

march 1

surgery date set (moved up in fact) to remove plates.

it ain't over!

the saga continues...

i got a second infection in the same plate area.

the infected area didn't get super big and visibly swollen, but i could feel it growing and feeling the same way as last time.  based on the previous infection i was able to recognize it much earlier than the first one when i was like, durrrrrr what's this swelling, i'll just wait and see, it will get better, i'm sure...  :) 

since i'm long-distance from my surgeons, i was able to communicate via phone and email and get some antibiotics which helped the infection go away.  my surgeons are so helpful!!!  it's really lucky for me because it could potentially be very difficult being so far away, but they are very responsive and willing to help me a lot.

so at this point, we're looking at the plates coming out.  yes - a second surgery!  in the process of scheduling it now and making plans.

i did some online research that indicated the plate removal can be as intense as the original surgery in terms of swelling and numbness, and even worse bruising.  that seems kind of bizarre to me, because they're not  doing nearly as much mucking around up in my face, just small incisions, grab the plates, in and out.  so i'm hoping that is not true.

at the least, my jaw function won't be destroyed by this procedure; that was the longest and most difficult part of recovery by far.

otherwise i'm doing well.  i can open my mouth pretty wide, seems normal now, just kind of feels like a good stretch.  eating really crunchy stuff like hard chips and nuts feels sort of weird, slightly unpleasant, but otherwise i can eat everything including chewy stuff.  things are still sensitive in my mouth, i jabbed my gum with my toothbrush by accident and that was OW!  also i can't use my electric toothbrush, it feels like a jackhammer.

still numb in my gums and one part of my chin, but i will take it.  even if it's permanent, it doesn't really bother me and the aligned jaws is worth it!

i do have lip incompetence still, which is the fancy way of saying my lips aren't closing and meeting together properly.  i think my top lip is the problem.  to close my lips i have to strain the bottom lip up, which causes "pruney chin."

so that's my report for now!  i'm glad that me showing my case to the online world is helping other people looking for info about their same problem!

pre/post

i'm three months minus three days post-op. already hit 12 weeks last friday.

i thought it would be good to post some proper before/after pics, and the main reason i'm doing this is because i see from comments and blog traffic data that some other people with asymmetry have been hitting this blog.  these pics are certainly not flattering (neither the before nor after haha).

not long ago i was googling madly to try to find someone that had the same issue as me, to help me figure out what was wrong with my jaw and chin.  i couldn't find anyone that had such left to right crooked-ness.   it was kind of depressing, in that i thought i was a bit of a freak of nature.  so maybe this will help somebody identify their own problem and a potential solution, and maybe also just help in knowing that they are not alone with their wonky jaw. :)

i actually had to ask my mom to return my "before" pics to me; i had sent them to her during my investigation phase because i wanted her to show my childhood dentist about the problem and ask whether he had noticed it getting worse.   i deleted those pics off my hard drive and from my email promptly after i sent them.  this shows how much i didn't like keeping evidence of myself at that angle.

luckily, the before/after comparison shows that my glasses are the only thing more crooked now. :D

insanely invasive surgery worked for me!