Last Surgeon Visit

Today was my last visit with the surgeon prior to my surgery. Basically it was the day I got to ask all of my final questions and pick up the prescriptions for the pain medications I will be on post-surgery. It was fairly uneventful, although he did say some things that conflicted with what I was told during the pre-admission tests. He told me he would not use a catheter (phew! for some reason this is the thing that has been making me the most nervous about the surgery) and that I did not need to take my patch off prior to surgery (they seemed very insistent about this during the tests).

The only funny thing about the meeting was he was telling me about some of the ridiculous things the hospital makes him do and forms they make him fill out. One form that needs to be filled out prior to them discharging me is one that asks him if I am allowed to have sex, and next to the 'yes' and 'no' boxes are boxes that say 'supervised' or 'unsupervised'.

A Bit of History

I have now been in braces for 19 months. Initially, I had i-braces which were cool because they are metal braces on the insides of your teeth. Essentially they are designed for people who feel self conscious about having braces, like adults and apparently people who play wind instruments. The i-braces were great except for the fact that my tongue would hit them when I tried to speak and I sounded like I had a lisp. Also, the wires on my bottom braces stuck right into my tongue so that everytime I swallowed my tongue would get cut up. The orthodontist solved this by putting a piece of composite on the ends of the bottom wires, however, the composite would fall off frequently and I was forced to spend a good deal of time traveling back and forth to the orthodontist office in order to have them repaired.

i-braces pic:
At the beginning of my treatment I was told that in order to correct my bite I was going to need to have lower jaw surgery and so we have been working towards that ever since. In April of this year they switched me over to regular clear porcelain braces in order to get me ready for surgery. As much of a pain as the i-braces were, the regular braces might be worse. Instead of being an adult with a slight lisp, I am now a 27-year old who looks like a 16 year old with braces.

When I first got the braces on I was horribly embarrassed and would try not to smile or laugh or try and talk without showing my teeth which simply resulted in people thinking there was something wrong with me and it probably drew more attention to the fact that I actually had braces in the first place.

So below is a picture of my teeth in April when they switched the braces from back to front. My teeth are pretty much straight but as you can see I have a pretty bad overbite which this surgery will attempt to correct (in addition to giving me the Jay Leno jaw I always wanted). My orthodontist switched her website recently so I do not have any pictures from when I started my treatment, but I will hopefully get some soon and be able to post them so you will be able to see how far I have already come.

Two weeks

Two weeks from today I will be having my surgery and I am a bit nervous. Yesterday I went to have all of my pre-admission tests done. The women were pretty nice, mostly middle-aged and liked to say things like "It must be so nice to be so young and healthy." One thing that was a bit unnerving was that they kind of just assumed 'no' answers to some of the questions on the health questionnaire. They would read the question (for instance "Do you have swelling in your ankles or legs that does not go away after sleeping"), say 'no', check the 'no' box and then look up at me for an answer. Not that they were ever wrong, but I felt anxious that they would just assume the answers to the questions and then basically just look to me for verification.

These women appeared amazed by many aspects of my health making me question what kinds of patients or surgery candidates they typically see. One thing that made them particularly amazed was my systolic blood pressure (84) and my BMI (19). Also, they seemed very surprised that I had never had anesthesia.

After all of the health questionnaire came the parts where I got to ask questions about the surgery. I asked if I would have a catheter (yes), if I would have a stomach tube (yes) and if the low blood pressure would be a problem (no). Then the nurse started describing the surgery which made me feel very light-headed. At one point I thought I was going to throw up, but luckily I held on and when she opened the door to the exam room I began to feel better.

Lastly, I went to go get my blood work done. I am afraid of needles, but once, at OCS they were doing blood work and I mentioned that and the woman said "Nobody likes needles. If you actually liked needles I would be concerned" so I have learned not to vocalize my dislike of needles to the person doing the blood work because they probably hear that from everyone. The guy drawing my blood was very nice but I could tell that he was having trouble finding a good vein in my right arm. This seems to be an ongoing problem for me and often results in the person drawing the blood missing my vein altogether and having to restick me. Luckily, this guy decided the right arm was a no go and started looking for a vein on the left. He found a good one and started drawing my blood. I started to feel really light-headed and when he was done and told me I could go, I stood up and started to fall. I stumbled over to the bed and he brought me an ice pack for the back of my neck. After a minute or so I was okay, albeit a bit embarrassed from almost passing out while having blood drawn.