My Story

I have had this class III malocculsion (underbite) for as long as I can remember. Most if not all my insecurities and shyness stem from this condition. Its hard for most people to understand what it does to your self esteem...and finally after numerous opinions from dentists and orthodontists...I'm in the stages of getting it corrected. Sadly, it comes with a HUGE price tag. For me, surgery is a necessity. Without getting it corrected...years down the road it would become increasingly painful for me to even eat. How crazy is that? I can't remember a time when I DIDN'T have pain in my jaw. Its going to be weird to be without headaches daily and soreness throughout my jaw from mearly talking and eating. My biggest reason for starting this blog is to MAYBE help someone else who has the same diformity of the jaw. I know that when researching orthognathic surgery there have been a few websites that have given me a tremendous amount of hope...but scare me to death as well. For people who don't have this... I would hope it would help you gain a little insight into this long process of correcting something that causes not only pain but alters how one feels about themselves.

My family and friends say the same thing everytime the subject comes up... "I don't really notice it.." Yes, you do. They are just so used to seeing it that they don't think twice about it. What makes me insecure is everyone else. The rest of the population that tend to be extremely naive. I can't tell you how many times my family and or friends have said "why don't you just tell them what it is so that they understand"... Well... to be honest... I'm WAY past that stage. I'm to the point where if someone asks me... I try to make them feel bad if not worse than they just made me feel by making some rediculous comment about how my lip "sticks out." Hence, the title of the blog... If I felt like people would understand what I was talking about.. my new response would be... It's a class III malocclusion you a-hole.

You may be thinking to yourself... why...who...would ask such a rediculous question about something that is clearly none of their business.. its like asking an overweight person why they are fat... you just don't do it... but some people.. are idiots. Who are these idiots? College age men. With a few drinks in them they suddenly turn into 5 year olds who ask all sorts of off the wall naive questions. However, 5 year olds don't make you feel like complete sh*t.

So enough ranting. I'm not promising that I won't do it again...cause to be honest.. it kinda makes me feel better... I'll just try to limit myself.

So here's my timeline of this whole ordeal....

Wisdom teeth taken out - Feb 3,2006
Top braces put on - Feb 8,2006
Bottom braces put on - July 19, 2006

So here I am.. 8 months into my treatment plan of 2 years. Tenatively I'm supposed to have surgery at the end of January because I happen to have some military training in March that I have to be ready for. We'll see if this actually happens because my orthodontist, whom I loved up until last week, completely changed the treatment plan. The reason we had originally talked about doing the surgery in January was because I'd be a year into my braces and at that point my teeth would be straight. (They are straight now...) Anyway, another reason was that I'd have to be in good condition to travel to my military training. This means I would have to be done with all the wiring and what not before I left... and finally... to make matters even better... I lose my insurance at the end of March because I'll be graduating. This sugery is f-ing expensive and its not for cosmetic purposes so technically insurance should cover it... which is why I basically lost it at the ortho's office recently. I guess I'm just sick of them changing things without really any compassion for their patient. It has happened pretty much all my life with this.. and at some point.. you're just done with acting like its ok and that its not something to get worked up over... Well.. now I just get pissed.. and then I have a nice crying session...sometimes I'm not even out of the ortho's office and those tears just start flowin. So this is where I stand now.. I'm bitter... annoyed...and downright depressed that this has caused me soo much anguish over the years. I hope it gets better some day... Until then... look forward to more rants from this girl with a crazy jaw.