A possible 'goodbye', just in case I die on the operating table.
By toowalrus 136 Comments
Let me start by saying that I'm 20, and still wearing braces on my teeth. I've had them since I was 18, and over that time, they've managed to straighten my teeth out. However, I've got an overbite from hell. You see, your upper teeth are slightly in front of your lower teeth when your jaw in closed, though in my case, my upper teeth land directly on top of my lower teeth. The result is a massive gap, with my jaw completely closed, I can fit a credit card through the teeth. You can probably imagine how much this sucks. When eating sandwiches, I'm unable to bite through lettuce, cheese, etc. I know, a nightmare, right?
So about a year ago, my orthodontist gave me a choice. I could have 4 teeth pulled, then over the course of several months, I could have my upper jaw pulled forward with a series of inconvenient and uncomfortable rubber bands, which would kind of fix the problem. This was a compromise, and wasn't guaranteed to work. I, personally, pride myself in taking great care of my teeth, I've never had a cavity, my teeth are a healthy pink and my teeth are white. I was already bummed that I had to have my Wisdom teeth pulled (because they came in perfectly, and never hurt) so the idea of having 4 more molars pulled was out of the question to me. Which left me with the other option- surgery.
Let me explain this, they're going to cut open the roof of my mouth, and enter my sinuses. Once there, they're going to cut through my upper jaw, and disconnect it from my skull. Then, they'll move it into a more appropriate position, and fasten it there with a series of plates and screws. Then, they're going to let the bone gap fill in naturally over the course of a few weeks, in which I'm not allowed to eat any solid food at all.
However, this is all completely fine with me, I'm not worried about the procedure at all. It's the anesthesia that worries me. I had my wisdom teeth pulled last year, fully awake. They put the nitrous mask on me, to which I felt no effect at all. Then they attempted to inject me with a conscious sedation. After a minute, they realized that it wasn't having any effect. See, I have terrible veins, they couldn't find one no matter how hard they tried. They injected me with enough drugs to knock me out five times over, to no effect, apparently my body is too stubborn to be knocked out with anything but hard drugs. The end result was the surgeon numbing me up, and letting me stay awake while he put his foot on the table in order to get the leverage he needed to yank my teeth out (which is an extremely weird feeling, by the way.)
TL;DR I'm not actually afraid of dying, but I am nervous about tomorrow. I've got to show up at 5:30 AM tomorrow, and undergo some crazy surgery, where they purposefully break my jaw off. I'm just letting you dudes know what's up, and asking you to wish me luck, and pray to your gods/sciences.
136 Comments