The First Post, The First Step Towards a Better Functioning Jaw!

Hey what's up, I'm Nathaniel!

Note: I started to write up this post before I did my first surgery, but I finished it and posted it after my first surgery, I'm just posting it as a separate entry simply to keep the blog organized.

Hi everyone, my name is Nathaniel and this is my blog about Jaw Surgery. Before committing to this, I read other blogs and they helped me greatly in my decision, so I am hoping that by documenting my journey it may help someone else in the future.

Ever since my early teen years I contemplated about getting Jaw Surgery. In the beginning, I really wanted to get it done because of being so self-conscious about my smile. I didn’t really like it, I wanted to hide it wherever possible.

As I grew older though, it didn’t bother me that much at all. I now smile in photos even though in my opinion it didn’t look that great. The reasons now changed more from psychological and appearance to oral health and function. At the time of this writing, I am 22 years old, and although I don’t have oral health problems now, I could very well have them in the future. Since I have an open bite, minor cross bite, and minor under bite, I could easily have teeth degradation and jaw problems like TMJ.

Function wise, I can speak though I do have a little lisp at times, I sometimes spit when I talk, and I can’t really eat a slice of pizza or a burger without making a crazy mess by yanking the cheese off the slice or ripping out tomatoes and lettuce from a burger due to my front teeth not able to bite through it. This all happens because of my open bite, which basically means my front teeth don't close over each other.

So, what's ahead of me?

From multiple consultations with several orthodontists and oral surgeons, all have said I need the following:

• All of my wisdom teeth extracted
• Expansion of my upper arch (top jaw) by SARPE (Surgically Assisted Rapid Palette Expansion)
• LeForte I to move my top jaw a little forward
• BSSO to move my bottom jaw a little backward
• Potential Genioplasty to balance out the profile after LeForte I and BSSO
• Braces to align the teeth

Reading all the above, it may seem like a lot of stuff to do, but in reality it's only two surgery dates and some braces. The first surgery will have the wisdom teeth extraction and the SARPE, then a year or so after that the LeForte I, BSSO, and Genioplasty would happen all at the same time. Braces would be in between the first and second surgery, then for about six months after the second surgery. So, all in all you could say it will be a little over 1.5 years for everything to be complete; and the year between the two surgeries isn't necessarily medically related but more so to hospital scheduling surprisingly enough.

I think that's a good first post! There will be more to come!

Cheers,
Nathaniel