Happy Second Jawiversary!

Friday was my two-year jawiversary (jaw surgery anniversary date) and today, Valentine's Day, marks two years since I came home from surgery with my jaw wired shut. It's hard to believe, because it feels so long ago, like it never actually happened.

A few weeks ago, I was absentmindedly running my fingers lightly across my chin when I realized that it felt...normal. There was no difference in sensation from the skin on either side of my chin to that on my chin itself. Which means the nerves damaged by the surgery have completely regenerated!

The majority of the sensation returned in the months after the surgery, but there was just a slight difference of sensation that very slowly improved over the past two years, and now it's totally healed. Hooray!

I'm thrilled with the results of the surgery. My smile is straight, my teeth fit together, I can chew like a real person, I don't have TMJ problems anymore, and I have a fabulous chin and profile.

I have no regrets about the surgery; although the recovery was really difficult, it was worth it in the end. Life is good.

Before, during and after pictures

I finally got my "after" pictures taken at my last surgeon visit, so if you would so kindly ignore the bags under my eyes, here you go! (The order goes: before braces, before surgery (with braces), and after surgery and braces removal.) Enjoy!

And here are my teeth, pre-braces, pre-surgery and post-braces and surgery:

Brace-free and fabulous

I promised brace-free pictures, and I like to keep my promises, so here you go:

I am now officially at six months post-surgery, though I had my braces taken off at the five month mark (a record for my orthodontist, who says he's never had a surgical patient's braces taken off that quickly.)

I still have to have some dental work done, though. There are large spaces between some of my top teeth, common after this kind of surgery, that I have to get filled in by my dentist next month.

So, we're getting there. By the end of this year, I figure everything - jaw opening, chin numbness, tooth spaces - will be taken care of, and I can finally move past this phase of my life.

Willkommen, Ich bin Bella

As you know, in February, I started this blog to chronicle my jaw surgery. My vision was that it would be a site for people seeking out information about what to expect when they went under the bone saw. I also saw it as a good way for my co-workers, family and friends to see how I was doing while I was at home recovering.

It's a specialized site that I've promoted on the jaw surgery forums I frequent, so it has a small, specific audience. When it began, the blog got an average of 15-30 hits per day. So, when I went to my stats page one day and saw that my site had gotten 599 hits in one day, I was more than a little surprised.

I did some digging to see where all of these new readers were coming from, and the same website popped up for all of them. It appeared to be a forum for people with braces. When I tried to click on the link, it wouldn't let me in without a user name and password. So, I created one, expecting admission to the site would be immediate.

Not so much.

My membership had to be approved by the site administrator first.

Umm...okay.

As I waited for the approval, I watched my stat counter reach more than 500 hits again the next day. What on earth was going on?

When I finally received my Willkommen email (that should have been my first hint), I began clicking around to see what the site was about and why I was suddenly so popular. While nothing on the site is overtly stated, it quickly became clear to me that it isn't a support group for people with braces, as I had assumed by its name.

It is...

what I can only presume to be...

wait for it...

a German orthodontic fetish website.

If you are choking on a retainer or a loose wire right now, I'll give you a moment to regain your composure.

[pause]

Alright then.

The page where my URL is posted is titled, "erwachsene frauen" or "adult women" and all it contains are links and links and links to pictures of women with braces. The pictures aren't dirty or provocative, just photos of unsuspecting women smiling with braces on their teeth, likely lifted from websites, forums and blogs like mine.

If this isn't a fetish site, I don't know what else it could be. Because otherwise, what's the point?

I imagine that part of the thrill is the fact that the women don't know their pictures are being used in this way; they are unknowing participants or even victims of this fetish.

And while part of me is a little disturbed by this development, I do have to note that after my URL were not one, but two exclamation points.

Yup, braces or not, I've still got it.

The funny thing is, the 1,500 alleged German orthodontic fetishists who flooded my site for three days in April actually did me a big favour. After the Germans came, my site traffic jumped from 15-30 hits per day to 75-100 hits per day, and it has stayed that way. My stats tell me these new visitors are the result of legitimate searches for jaw surgery-related terms, not more hits from the same site.

From what I understand, because of the huge spike in hits, Google's crawlers took note of my website and prioritized it in their searches. Now, when people who are looking for information on jaw surgery and recovery, they find my site. So in a weird way, the fetishists helped me help other people going through the same thing.

How thoughtful of them! How am I ever to repay their kindness or thank them for what they have contributed to the jaw surgery community?

I considered taking some pictures of sauerkraut stuck in my arch wires, or maybe a big German sausage against my brackets. But that was too much work. The post-surgery anemia makes me tired, don't you know.

In the end, I decided to devote my final braces colours to my legions of German fans. The bracket ties are bands of black, red and gold - the colours of the German flag. See?

Genießen Sie, meine Freunde.

The light of the end of the tunnel

I had my first post-surgery orthodontic appointment today. I was looking forward to it because it meant I could finally get these annoying surgical hooks off my teeth. So, I was already super excited to be there, and then my orthodontist said something that made me just about jump out of the chair:

Orthodontist: Bella, your teeth are perfect!
Bella: Hooray!
Ortho: We can take these braces off in three months.

Bella: [whips head to stare at Ortho, incredulous] SHUT UP!!!

Ortho: Uh....Excuse me?
Bella: Are you for real? How can that be even possible? Seriously??
Ortho: Well, we'll see how it goes.

So, that means that by this fall, my mouth will actually be metal-free. I am in shock that it could happen that fast - I was expecting it would be another year for sure.

In honour of this momentous news, I celebrated by getting crazy fuchsia and teal wire ties. Observe:

And I must say: flossing your teeth without surgical hooks for the first time in 3 1/2 months = sheer heaven.

3 1/2 months post-surgery

It's been awhile since I posted pictures of what I look like post-surgery, so here are some that I took of myself while I was bored in my car yesterday. Not exactly professional shots, but you get the drift.















I can't believe it's been almost 3 1/2 months since this surgery. It's all very surreal.

Good news, finally!

I went to see my surgeon this weekend. Since I got my jaw unwired, I see him every six weeks to make sure my jaw is healing on schedule. This was my second six-week follow-up and I have to admit I wasn't looking forward to it because of my last experience.

At my unwiring appointment, he fastened four elastics - two on each side of my mouth - connecting my upper and lower teeth and told me to wear them at all times. These were to train my jaw to open symmetrically. They were placed at an angle to keep my lower jaw in its new position and to ensure it didn't start regressing back to where it was before the surgery. At night, I had to wear a single elastic connecting my front upper and lower teeth.

The problem was that my teeth move easily and quickly. So, instead of keeping my teeth in their current position, the elastics started pulling them forward. Over the course of the six weeks from my unwiring to my next appointment, my teeth shifted into an underbite position, with the lower teeth on the outside of the upper.

My lower jaw was slightly further out than it should be.
But I'm still totally cute.

As you can imagine, when I went to my surgeon with an underbite two months after my surgery, he was not pleased with the results. I had expected that he would just reverse the elastics until my teeth went back to where they were supposed to be.

But that's not all he did. Oh no.

In addition to changing the elastics, he took his thumbs and pushed my lower teeth until they sat behind my upper teeth.

Let me repeat that: He pushed my teeth into place with his thumbs.

I'll wait while you imagine that and twitch, because I'm still twitching thinking back on it.

After four days of migraines, my teeth were back to where they belonged. And six weeks later, it was time to make the two-hour drive to see the surgeon again.

In addition to having waking nightmares about his thumbs coming after me, I was a bit stressed about being able to open my mouth wide enough. When I got unwired, my surgeon told me I had to work up to opening my mouth 30 mm before I could go back to my orthodontist and continue with braces adjustments.

The last appointment, I only made it to 25 mm, and in the six weeks since then, I had been struggling to stretch it farther than that, and not making much progress. Fortunately, about a week before the appointment, my jaw finally started to give.

I took my jaw stretching device on the road and used it in the car on the way to the appointment. And, miraculously, when I saw my surgeon, not only did he not come after me with his powerful thumbs, but he also announced that I had made it to 32 mm.

32 mm!! Wooo hoooo!!!! No more surgical hooks on these teeth, and one step closer to debracing!!

Finally, some good news.

Animated illustrations of jaw surgery

I was searching for diagrams illustrating the surgery I underwent and I came across this really cool page from the Mayo Clinic that has animated illustrations of each of the surgeries.

Check it out.

Tools of the trade

Tomorrow marks the two-month anniversary of my jaw surgery. It's hard to believe that eight weeks has passed since my super high-five happy times, but here we are.

The bruising is gone, the swelling is gone, those awful wires binding my jaw together are gone, and people tell me that I look like a million bucks. And yet, my recovery is not over. Not in the least. There's the small matter of being able to open my mouth and chew things. Yeah, that little detail.

After I got my jaw unwired, I could only open my mouth a few millimetres. My surgeon gave me some exercises to do to help get my opening back. After one month, I was only able to open my mouth 15 millimetres.

In case you're wondering how much that is, here's a ruler. Put some household objects up to it and imagine only being able to open your mouth that wide.

15 mm = One thumb's width.
The diameter of a small coin.
Less than one Scrabble tile.
And keep in mind, it's 15 mm, teeth to teeth.

Do you know what you can eat when you can only open your mouth 15 mm? Not a whole lot. Unless you chop it up into eensie teensie little pieces.

The situation of sharing the same food as my friend's baby was getting kind of old. I had to get on top of that sucker. So, I ran to my physiotherapist, stat.

She stretched my jaw, moved it around, massaged it, and then handed me this:

I wondered if perhaps she was giving me some tools
so I could break into the pharmacy late at night
and swipe some of the good drugs
so I would no longer care that I couldn't really eat.

Alas, this was not the case.
I was supposed to use this device to stretch my mouth open.
That piece on the end goes into your mouth,
and then you use the grip to crank it open.

Seriously??
Look, I don't like you, and you don't like me,
but we're in this together, so we better make the best of it, alright?

At first, I couldn't even get my mouth around the thing.
But after a few stretches, I was ready.
I wasn't able to crank it open for quite some time,
but after a few weeks of baby steps...

Crank, crank, crank, crank, crank.
That's five, in case you were counting.
25 millimetres.

25 mm=two finger widths
The spine of a substantial self-help book
The width of a fork.

And might I mention,
it feels as comfortable as it looks.

The thing is, 25 mm is not enough. My surgeon won't let me go back to my orthodontist for braces adjustments until I reach 30 mm. And I am not considered fully recovered from this surgery until I have a "functional opening", which is around 40 mm. The physiotherapy torture device has 10 clicks on it. I have only been able to reach 5-6 clicks at this point.

This is what the torture device looks like when open 10 clicks.

More than a little daunting.

Infuriating, really.

But mostly depressing.

But I'll keep at it. I'm a trooper that way. A pathetic trooper who can't open her mouth wide enough to eat an ice cream cone, but a trooper nonetheless.

More before and after photos

My surgeon's office just sent me the pictures they took of me one week before the surgery.

And now I know what I would look like in mug shots.
I mean, do they try to make the "before" pictures look bad?

Here are some shots that have been taken in the last few weeks:

A silly shot taken on Day 45,
on the way to sushi, which guess what?
You don't have to chew.

A profile shot taken at the sushi restaurant.

You can really see the difference in my chin/profile in this shot.
I used to avoid profile shots like the plague.
Now, I loves them, I do.

If you compare this smiley shot to the smiley "before" picture,
you'll see that my smile is no longer lopsided.
Hooray!

A serious shot to show my lovely new chin...
and the new hairdo to go with.

Poke me, baby

One of the things that stressed me the most about having jaw surgery was the possibility that there would be nerve damage, leaving my chin and lower lip numb for a year or perhaps forever. My orthodontist told me the likelihood of permanent nerve damage increases with your age. As a 32-year-old undergoing the surgery, I had a 32% chance of permanent numbness.

This prospect was thoroughly unacceptable and made me determined to be in the 68% of people who regain full feeling in their lips and chin.

So, I did what I've done with pretty much everything surrounding this surgery: obsessive-compulsive research, or OCR for short. I found a number of homeopathic and natural remedies to help reduce inflammation and nerve pain, and I investigated acupuncture to help rejuvenate nerves.

I also stalked jaw surgery survivors. A friend had the surgery in her 40s and ended up with permanent nerve damage in her chin. When she finally discovered acupuncture, which helped her get some of the feeling back, the practitioner told her that he could have helped her get all of it back...if she had only come to him one month after the surgery, instead of one year later.

Some sharp needles in my face vs. not being to fully appreciate future make-out sessions = easy decision. I made the appointment for two weeks after the surgery. Stat.

You talkin' to me?
Can you tell I took this shot myself?

I had gone for acupuncture before, with mixed results. One practitioner took on so many patients that she made her storage closet into a treatment room. You'd be lying on the table, immobile (because needles were piercing various body parts, and moving would shoot pain up your limbs), and someone would walk in, reach up to pull something off the shelf above your head, and leave. And then someone else would do the same a few minutes later. She was also so busy that she'd even forget needles in you. I stopped going to her after discovering a large needle in my ankle and having to pull it out myself.

The other practitioner I saw could barely speak English. She had such a heavy Chinese accent that the majority of conversations with her involved the phrases, "What?" "Excuse me?" and "I'm sorry, I don't understand," as well as a fair bit of gesticulating. I don't know about you, but when someone is coming at you with a handful of sharp needles, it kind of helps to know what they're saying.

Regarding the acupuncture itself, both of the practitioners I saw were great at it and their treatments helped me feel a lot better. But when you've got a broken jaw, you just want to go to someone you're comfortable with. Fortunately, my new naturopath also practices acupuncture. I was relieved to discover this, as I really liked her, even though her elimination diet had nearly pushed me over the edge the last time I saw her.

A great up-the-nose shot. But you can see all the homeopathic and natural remedies in the background.
Plus, I have a cute nose, right?

I usually find acupuncture really relaxing. I go into a meditative state, and sometimes, I feel like I am levitating out of my body. Not this time, though, because my naturopath and I were goofing around with my camera, trying to get a shot that showed the needles in my face. The facial acupuncture needles are even thinner than the regular kind, so it was really hard to get them to show up in pictures.

Finally, we got a good one!

When she took the needles out from behind my ears, it was the strangest sensation - it felt like they were still there. I rubbed my skin, concerned that this was acupuncture déjà vu all over again, when she said, "Does it feel like they're still there? That means the chi is working."

I didn't know what that meant. But all I knew was that two weeks after my surgery, I had about 75% of the feeling back in my chin and lower lip. In the days following the acupuncture treatment, my feeling came back rapidly. By the one month post-surgery mark, I had 95% of it back, and today, I would say that I'm at about 98%.

Am I going back to get more needles stuck into me? H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, yeah!