Who I Am

Hello! I'm starting this blog as I'm preparing for double jaw surgery in just a few short months. As I've been wrapping my mind around what's to come and starting to plan every small controllable detail I can like the Type A rock star I am, I've come across so many incredibly helpful and comforting blogs written by people who've faced the same experience. It has made me feel so much less alone in this journey that I thought I'd start one myself. I would love to offer encouragement to anyone who's had similar challenges to mine and would also welcome coming across anyone who's going through surgery at the same time. Here's a snapshot of me!
  • I'm a 31 year old wife to an amazing man and mother of 3 adorable young kiddos. We live in Colorado and love it.
  • TMJ has been an unfortunate large part of my life since I was 10 years old. It became all-consuming 5 years ago when my frequent headaches and jaw pain became excruciating all day, every day occurrences.
  • I had both a TMJ splint and braces simultaneously when I was 12-14 years old. The braces made my teeth beautifully straight but my bite opened back up within weeks of getting my braces and bands off. The TMJ splint helped my jaw relax and stop locking up, but I had very frequent headaches as a teenager and young adult. I stopped wearing the splint when I outgrew it.
  • 5 years ago when my pain got out of control, I started seeing another TMJ doctor. He made me another splint which I wore 24/7 up until just a few months ago when I got braces on for surgery. The splint helped me not be in horrible pain all the time (although a good deal of the time I still had bad pain), but it simply wasn't livable.
  • After many years of trying countless (seriously) interventions to help with the pain and improve my quality of life, my extremely conservative, anti-surgery TMJ doctor referred me to my current orthodontist and surgeon. I'm scheduled for double-jaw surgery December 6th, 2017 and am both excited and slightly terrified.
I'll share more about my reasons why I'm moving forward with surgery and of course pictures (pictures are the best!). I'm excited to see the changes and improvements that will come over the next 6+ months!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Before Pictures

Image
I'm already a few months underway with my braces, but I did think to snap a few pictures of my face and profile before the braces went on. I'm hoping they'll be a great way to look back and compare once they're done rearranging my face :)  My resting face (if I'd done a true resting face, my mouth would be hanging open because of my open bite but didn't think to snap the pic that way!)  Crooked and gummy but don't care!  Me biting down (yes, this is as close as my teeth touch - only the very last tooth on each side touches, and that's barely)  Right side profile Left side profile (softer than the right side, interested to see how much this changes post-surgery)
Read more

My Back Story: Part 1

I've had jaw and bite issues for most of my life that I can remember. When I was 10, my jaw started giving me limited range of motion and even locking completely shut at times. My mom eventually took me to the dentist, who referred me to a TMJ specialist. Once there, they discovered discrepancies between my left and right jaw joints. It was such a long time ago and I was so young that I can't recall many details of what shape my jaw was actually in. I do remember the doctor saying that I was a great candidate for surgery (most likely because of my skeletal malformation), but that it wouldn't be a good idea until my jaw had fully grown. This comment stands out because as a 11-ish year old, I thought surgery sounded kind of cool (ohh youthful ignorance, how I miss it). They created a bite splint for me to relieve the pressure and stress off my jaw that I had to wear 24/7. By this point, I was in 6th grade, so the massively thick splint I had to wear over my TOP teeth that was
Read more