D-Day

Hey, and thanks for finding my blog!

I am about to undergo surgery to break both my jaws and rearrange them in order to complete my orthodontic treatment. My problem is that my bottom jaw is too big, and juts out to the left. So I'm a bit like the Habsburgs. Except for the inbreeding.

I've had to braces on for nearly eight years due to a litany of disasters, so it's fair to say I've been looking forward to this day for a while.

The operation is a bimaxillary osteotomy. This means the top wisdom teeth will be removed (the bottom wisdoms were removed years ago), the jaws will be broken where the wisdoms used to be, and the face will be rearranged into its new position. The procedure should last 3-5 hours, and I'll be on a liquid diet for about a month.

After three months of fine-tuning, the braces will finally be removed. They need to come off sooner or later as the sheer length of time they have been on has shortened the roots of two of my teeth. They may fall out when the braces come off. There is a 30% risk of permanent nerve damage, and a 5% risk of a disaster that would require my mouth to be wired shut for some time.

It all sounds extreme, so why am I doing this? It's not just cosmetic surgery; there are medical benefits too:

- The misalignment of my bite means I'd wear down a couple of my teeth very quickly, causing dental problems

- I struggle to chew as my teeth don't meet properly. Before I had braces, I'd often end up merely stripping the topping off pizzas with my front teeth instead of being able to bite

- My jaw often dislocates. This happened once when I was having a telephone interview for an internship. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.

- My speech is affected. Granted, I have a pretty strong Black Country accent, but it doesn't help that my mouth moves diagonally to the left when I talk. I get jaw-ache and sometimes dislocation when I try to make my mouth move normally.

- Saliva often pools behind my bottom lip, causing people to risk unwanted showers during conversation with me.

- If I don't have the operation, my teeth will quickly return to their pre-orthodontic positions when the braces comes off. Given that my bottom two incisors were practically parallel and facing each other before, that's not something I want.

So that's that. The anaesthetist has been round while I've been typing this. He's reassured me that he will have me well-drugged up. But I forgot to ask the most important question: Is there wifi on the ward?