Surgery Ready!

Hey gang!

Had my appointment today with the surgeon and received pretty much nothing but good news.  He had the models and the x-rays with him during the appointment.  He kept drawing little lines on the models and checking the symmetry of my face and my smile.  Eventually he shook my hand and concluded with "well you did a fantastic job of following any instructions you're orthodontist has given you and you are ready to go.  From here we will start the booking process."  I'm pretty sure I did a little dance internally when he said that.  He said he had one final adjustment he would tell my ortho about before monday for my next ortho appointment, but that the booking process takes long enough where it won't matter.

So aside from being ready, he also said he will only be doing one jaw, my lower jaw.  He said he is going to turn it so that the midline is aligned and there will be no adjustment to my chin or anything like that.  He didn't give me like exact measurements or even really tell me what he was going to do to my bottom jaw to fix the open bite though.  I guess I'm to blame for not asking I just don't understand how he's gonna fix it with just adjusting my lower jaw.  The only thing I can think of his maybe turning the lower jaw up and under my top jawBut I trust this dude and I think he knows what hes doing.  The good news about this though is two things, one the cost of the total surgery is probably almost cut in half with only one jaw having to get done, and two is that I'm hoping the recovery time will be quicker.

Alright I just spent like an hour researching how the hell he was going to do this and I found a terrific link which I think explains it really really well.  Lower Jaw Surgery 1 and Lower Jaw Surgery 2
I think either of those would be an option but these pictures illustrate he could pretty much do either and still accomplish the same goal:

Its basically a good visual to show no matter which way he goes about it, he can rotate the jaw in all directions to get the teeth to interlock correctly.  I think he will be turning my jaw so the midline is correct and then I believe the jaw will just be rotated clockwise (if your looking at these pictures above) and maybe just a small bit backwards.  These are really good visuals though I feel like and its comforting to know that he can fix everything with just the one jaw.  Pretty cool!

Anyway so after the meeting the assistant was talking with my surgeon in front of me as he was giving her the next steps and he told her we were ready to do the booking process.  She asked when he thought we should have the surgery and he looked at me and I said as soon as possible.  She asked him "before Christmas?" And he was just like "Um we'll have to see whats available, and he asked me if it was urgent."  I was honest and said its not like I absolutely need it, I'm not in pain or anything but preferably I'ld like to have it as soon as possible.  She said oh well we'll have to check to see what dates we have available once we hear back from insurance.  So once that conversation takes place, hopefully in the next few weeks, I'll be able to book a time.  The fact that she said "before Christmas?"  already tells me that they have time slots available so there is a sliver of hope of getting this taken care of in 2012.  If not I'm thinking early next year as I've been saying all along. 

I'll make another post after I visit from my orthodontist on Monday, and hopefully the next post after that will be a Surgery Date post woooohoooo!  Happy Halloween everyone!

My topical Halloween Costume from Saturday

Impressions

Hey all,

Went in for my impressions today and got those all completed.  Not much a story behind that they just took new X-Rays and then we did the whole goopy impression business.  I was pretty much in and out but I did ask the people at the front desk about when they thought my surgery would be.  The one girl didn't have my chart in front of her but she said the obvious next step is the whole presentation on 10/31st and if I'm ready to go and all the insurance information is done then I'd be set to book a date.  She actually said that we would send in the insurance info at that time but I'm pretty sure they did that last time or at least I hope they did because that's what they told me.  I'm assuming since she didn't have my chart in front of her she didn't know for sure.

She asked me what my name was again and then said that both the surgeon and orthodondist met a week or so ago again to talk about me so that was good to hear I guess. I'm wondering if that was the same day I was there last when I ran into my ortho on the way out of the surgeon's office.  Anyhow the biggest and probably most disappointing news was when I said realistically when do you think I'll have it, say that everything is a go on 10/31st, what do you think? How long is the average time after that that the surgery takes place? She said she just booked one for someone else in December and even that was difficult so I said so what mid December or early next year?  She said most likely.  It already seemed like she knew it would be next year but she didn't want to tell me.  I initially told them the whole reason I'm asking was to find out when I should start talking to my HR department about my options and whether I'll be on FMLA or not.  I told her where I worked and she said I would be on FMLA without a doubt but I wouldn't talk to them until I got the date.  So kind of disappointing I guess.  I've been doing more reading and a lot of the websites were saying pretty much 6-8 weeks after the impressions the surgery would occur so I guess that's wrong in my case.  Seems like every time I read something new I get more wishful thinking.  I doubt I'll stop either haha.

As for the SureSmile wires.  They definitely hurt my teeth for longer than a typical tightening but after a few days it goes away.  In my case though the molars were the most sore and continued to be sore for the 2nd week too.  I'm pretty much all good now though they don't hurt at all and it feels good to bite down and feel most of the teeth interlock. Hopefully there won't be too much else they need to do from here and I'll get my date around the first week of November.

Not gonna post any pics today, but I did finally upgrade from my shitty Droid X to an iPhone 5!  I'm absolutely in love with everything about it, including the better camera so maybe the pics will look a bit better haha.  Who knows I might even post a video one time!