I have a pronounced under-bite, meaning my lower jaw is further forward than my upper jaw. The medical terminology is a
class III malocclusion. In my case, my upper jaw is slightly recessed by 1 mm, and my lower jaw is jutting forward by 6 mm (from the average human). This comes out to a distance of 7mm between the lower and upper teeth. My upper jaw is also canted (rotated) down to the left by 1mm.
To correct this I will be getting orthognathic (fancy word for jaw-face-bone) surgery, where they'll cut both the maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw) and reposition the upper slightly forwards and the lower slightly more backwards. Putting these words together my surgery is a
bilateral maxillar osteotomy and mandibular osteotomy.
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| Somewhere in history, a surgeon was like, let's just break the face and see what happens. |
They're doing a
Lefort I osteostomy (fancy word for cutting bones) for the maxilla (upper jaw).
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| I'm the lower one called a Le Fort 1, which I guess is better than the alternatives. |
For the lower jaw, they're going to cut along the side of the bone, and slide it backwards. The type of procedure they're doing is a
Bilateral Sagittal Split Osteotomy (instead of a Intraoral Vertical Ramus Osteotomy). hile doing this they need to avoid the inferior alveolar nerve, which can get bruised or cut during this procedure and provides sensations for my chin among other things.
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| I love that their infographic says "No Man's Land" |
For the upper jaw they're
just cutting through all the nerves, because there are too many of them, they're small, and they'll grow back. The human body is a crazy place.
Both jaws will then be wired together with a plastic splint inbetween with molds of the teeth for the teeth to slot into.
Why do you need jaw surgery?
The question I get asked most frequently coming up to this operation is: "Why do you need jaw surgery? You look fine." This was the question I repeatedly asked my orthodontist (who may have been slightly exasperated by the third time). He explained, before braces, my teeth were crooked, with the lower teeth jutting backwards, and the upper teeth jutting forwards, so that they could meet and allow me to bite things. Similarly my teeth were crowded in strange positions to allow this to all match up.
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| The first day of braces around 2 years ago |
If I never got braces, gum and teeth issues were going to get worse and worse over time (something that was already starting to affect me), so braces are needed to straighten the teeth out. Now after the braces straighten the teeth, they are no longer able to meet because of my large underbite. This is my current state of affairs, where I can't bite things much anymore.
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| Large underbite, my tongue moonlights as my lower teeth to help bite things |
If I left it like this, eating has become a chore in the short term, and in the long term my molars are working overtime and wearing out, and my front teeth are getting no use, which is apparently a no-no for long term tooth health. Therefore I need jaw surgery to align my jaws. I was hoping to move just one jaw, but for that much movement, the surgeon feels that moving just the upper forward or the lower backward would cause my face to look abnormal. And we arrive at our double jaw surgery decision.
Yay.
Tomorrow is my surgery, there's a pretty good chance I won't be blogging for the first day or so, but if you're coming from the future, I'll try and back-date some posts with pictures other people take of me, and my memories from that time.
Next is
Twas the night before surgery
Previous was
T minus 2 days
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