Two months from today

This is another post about teeth and surgery. I'm going to be explaining exactly what my surgeon will do, so if you're squeamish, skip it.

I can't sleep, which means I still think it's Sunday, May 8th (Happy Mother's Day!). So I'm thinking about what I'm going to be doing two months from today, on July 8th.

I'm going to be going to the hospital where my wonderful surgeon is going to make my orthodontist like my teeth for the first time in my life.

You know what I said when I met my surgeon the first time? I think I was in middle school and the surgeon asked me if I knew why I was there. I very cleverly told him, "Dr. H doesn't like my teeth."

I previously explained that I have an under bite where basically the space my lower teeth wrap around is bigger than my upper teeth (like, my teeth are in concentric bite shaped circles...). Like I said, originally it wasn't so obvious from the front, it was more like my lower jaw was just wider, but with my braces they pulled my lower teeth forward, so it's under bite all the way around.

So my surgery is in two months.

I've gone back and forth about a gajillion times whether I want to be wired shut for six weeks or have plates and screws. There's a tiny risk of nerve damage with the latter, and no risk of nerve damage for the former. With the latter, I'll know as soon as I wake up from the anesthesia whether the surgery was successful. With the former, I won't know till they unwire me.

But that's not what I'm using to make this decision.

The last time I saw the surgeon, he reminded me and my parents of our choices. As we were leaving the hospital, we were discussing it. My parents both agreed that they wouldn't be able to deal with being wired shut for six weeks, they'd feel claustrophobic in their own heads.

Suddenly, two thoughts came to my mind.

Thought #1: I love to ski. I haven't actually skied since 8th grade because I got busy in high school, but I was really good in middle school. At one point in maybe 6th grade, I decided to try snow boarding.

It completely freaked me out. I had both feet attached to the same thing. I couldn't handle it.

In the car, I suddenly realized it might be like that, only my head instead of my feet. My head's a lot more important than my feet. It'd be talking instead of walking that I wouldn't be able to do properly. Not a pleasant thought.

Thought #2: At some point when I was little, I would imagine anywhere between ages 5 and 8, my father read The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask to us. After this, we rented the movies. I don't remember anything about The Three Musketeers movie, which makes me think I might be imagining having rented it, but I do remember some scenes from The Man in the Iron Mask very very vividly.

Mainly, I remember the last scene. The king, who turned out to actually be the younger twin and therefore not the legitimate king, has been put in the iron mask he previously made his brother wear because he is evil and knew his brother had the more legitimate claim and was afraid someone would find out. You just see him thrashing around this room that he's clearly locked into. There's been this decree that no one is to speak to him or be spoken to by him or anything for the rest of his life and he gets his food through a little cat flap on the door and he has this iron thing on his head. It looks like a knight's helmet.

Except he can't take it off. He's completely trapped inside it and when you throw in that he's trapped in this room completely alone until he dies with no human contact whatsoever, you have to imagine that he's going to wind up trapped inside his head and going crazy.

I don't know why I watched this movie when I was little. My parents were pretty good about making sure the things we watched were age appropriate, and to be fair, it's not like this movie ever gave me nightmares.

But I think that's because it never occurred to me that there could be any kind of equivalent in my own life.

Driving out of that parking garage listening to my parents talk about being claustrophobic in their own heads, I realized I would feel like I was reenacting that last scene for the whole 6 weeks.

Hell no, I thought to myself. I'm getting plates and screws.

So, with the method decided on, the next step is the actually surgery.

This is the part you don't want to read if you're squeamish about surgery.

Basically, the goal is to widen my upper jaw and bring my lower jaw back and to the side slightly (because as if my face isn't screwed up enough, it's crooked... I'm kidding. From the outside, my face is fine. Although I can tell my lower jaw is crooked, and I can see how it's made the rest of my face slightly crooked. Moving on.).

To do this, they're basically going to slit my upper palette and put in a permanent palette expander. BTW no matter what I had decided about plates and screws or wires, I would have wound up with plates and screws on the top.

Then they're going to cut into my lower jaw. I'm not exactly sure where. I know one of the cuts is going to go through the very back lower right of my mouth because that's where the wisdom tooth they had to take out for the surgery was. Other than that, I just know they're gonna cut into my bones and pull my jaw back and to the side.

Then they put a bunch of metal in and screw it all together.

And voilá. Perfect teeth.

Then I spend two nights or so in the hospital. Which honestly is making me somewhat nervous.

I've never spent a single night in the hospital. When I got my wisdom teeth out is the first time I've gone to a hospital for something more than a consult or getting blood work done, unless you count when I was born, which I don't.

And of course, I'm 19 which means I'm not a kid. Maybe it sounds childish, but I'm praying they'll let me have my parents there when they knock me out and wake me up. I mean, they're doing stuff with my mouth and teeth and jaw. Considering my extreme lack of hospital experience, I think I deserve my parents there....

PS I'm just gonna point out that I have an older sister who broke her leg at 18 months, and two brothers who have each gotten stitches and various other bloody things that got taken care of in the emergency room.

They all had parents around for their hospital treatment!! Well, except for the times when they were staying with friends or on biking trips or whatever. But they still had someone with them for all this stuff....

Some background on my teeth

If things like teeth, braces, or whatever freak you out, skip this post.

Basically, my orthodontist (who is wonderful and fabulous) doesn't like my teeth. Since I'm going to have jaw surgery this summer and expect this topic to come up, here's the general background of those little white things in my mouth.

I have a weird under bite. Normally, when you say "under bite" people picture lower teeth that are in front of the upper teeth in the front. Although that is what my teeth look like right now, the orthodontist actually did that. Before the various metal contraptions that have been put in my mouth over the years, my upper front teeth were actually in front of the lower ones. The problem with my mouth is that my lower jaw is basically wider (not to mention off center) than my upper jaw.

So if you look at the sides of my mouth, all my life my lower teeth have been on the outsides of my upper teeth.

I had a series of retainers starting somewhere between 1st and 3rd grade, although I honestly don't remember when I started. These fixed things like the fact that one of my upper front baby teeth decided it liked me too much and wouldn't fall out, even when the grown up tooth had grown in behind it (for a little while, I literally had two teeth there...). Eventually, the dentist yanked it out and a few years later the orthodontist pushed it forward with a bright pink and purple splotchy retainer (is it bad I remember what colors I chose for it? The case was pink and purple marble colored...).

I don't remember what I had in 4th grade, although I'm sure I had something, but in 5th grade the real stuff started.

First they put in a metal band around the inside of my lower teeth to make sure nothing moved while they futzed with my upper teeth.

A few months later they gave me a palate expander which also had little rings on the front. The goal at this point was to beat my growth. Dr. H wanted to force my growth in a direction that wouldn't require surgery.

To do that, he gave me head gear. Not normal head gear, though. Reverse head gear.

My head gear had two lavender plates connected by a metal bar. One plate fit over my chin, the other on my forehead. The bar went down the center of my face. In front of my mouth was a cross bar. The cross bar was connect to those rings on my palate expander with elastics.

I think I had to wear this 12 hours a day for something like 6 months, maybe it was a year. I don't remember.

What I do remember, and I'm sure my whole 6th grade class remembers, is that if I slept in it, I'd wake up with it twisted sideways. So I had to wear it while I was awake.

I wore that stupid contraption to school all year.... Luckily it looked like a medieval torture device, so I mostly I just got sympathy.

I have a very high palate, so I never learned to talk properly with my palate expander. For 2 years, I never said one hard G properly. I can't describe the sound I made instead, but eventually Dr. H took pity on me. He took my palate expander and that little metal band thing out a couple of weeks early. There was no metal in my mouth at my Bat Mitzvah.

A week or two later, though, I got good old fashioned rail road track braces. That was the end of January in 7th grade.

Those braces were just on the top. For three years, that's all I had. They scooted upper teeth around and ignored the bottom.

Then in 10th grade, on the Friday of I think the second weekend of the musical (I don't *think* it was opening night...) they put in bottom braces too.

For another 2 years, they pushed things around but honestly didn't move much. Mostly, they just changed the elastics every month.

Sometime in January or so my senior year, they gave me elastics. This is when I started getting really really frustrated with my teeth. These elastics pulled my lower teeth forward. By March of 12th grade, I had a good old fashioned under bite.

Now I'm going to back track a little. Sometime in high school, the orthodontist decided we failed at beating my growth. My options were either surgery or lots of junk when I'm 40 because my teeth don't hit each other properly. We opted for surgery.

Between a lot of non teeth related things (like submitting things to insurance and stuff), my surgery didn't happen in 10th grade, 11th grade, or 12 grade.

One day in December 2009 (so 12th grade), I went to the orthodontist. I asked if there was any chance of not having braces at my senior prom.

Dr. H said I'd still have them.

At this point, I just broke down. I was convinced that I would have braces for the rest of my life. My children would get their braces off before me and I would probably be buried still wearing braces.

FINALLY the next June, after I had graduated and everything (so yes, my senior prom pictures have braces and an under bite.... Grrrrr....), we met with the surgeon again (we'd met him sometime when we first decided we'd do the surgery, but never went anywhere with it).

He said we might be able to do the surgery next December (that would be December 2010), depending on what method we decided to do and if my wisdom teeth were in the way of the surgery.

It turned out my lower right wisdom tooth would have to come out and would have to come out at least 6 months before the surgery.

So last December, my surgeon (who is fabulous and I think something of a perfectionist, since he insisted on taking out my tooth himself. Not having his staff do it or something, but doing it himself...) took out the tooth.

Rewinding back to August, my orthodontist told me that if we weren't going to be doing the surgery until next summer, we could take the braces off for the year.

A week before I left for college, they took my braces off. After 5 1/5 years of braces and 12 years of having some metal in my mouth with month long breaks between appliances, my mouth was utterly empty.

Of course, I have to have the braces on for the surgery (they need hooks on my teeth or something...), so I'm getting them put back on when I get home from school in May...

At some point, I'll explain exactly what it is that they'll be doing to me come my surgery date (beginning of July), but for now I'll just say that on that day I will stop having an under bite of any kind and through July and a good chunk of August I think I'll be eating lots of things I don't have to chew...