I am 30 yrs old, an actress (who needs to be acting more quite honestly!) and I have decided to go ahead and do this braces and surgery thing! I am scared!!! But I also have an ok job right now that's really flexible considering I sometimes leave for 3 hours for an audition, and I have decent benefits...plus in the last few months I have had non-stop headaches, neck aches, jaw aches, ear aches-you name it, it's ached!
When I was a kid I had braces-no lie-I got them my first week of high school and got them off like two weeks before graduation-talk about brutal! I needed it though so it's ok =) Back then the orthodontist, Mr. "Braces make happy faces" Dr. L, suggested I get the surgery to my parents, but they thought it was too cruel to do to a kid, considering back then the only option was to have your jaws wired shut for 6 or more weeks after surgery....so alas, my jaw remained misaligned, but my teeth got straighter.
But I still have facial asymmetry which I am not happy about and my jaw hurts a lot. Plus my teeth are crooked again. My jaw literally grew too much so my top jaw overjets over my lower jaw (Yes, I have an overbite) but one side is gummy and the other is normal. So...I went to my dentist and she referred me to my orthodontist, Dr. Paz. He seems really cool so far and actually has options for lots of entertainment folks like me who doesn't necessarily want braces to show but still want to get fixed up. I am not a candidate for Invisilign, but I can get lingual (behind the teeth) braces. But I am jumping way ahead! I have two to four months in this splinty contraption to ease the tension on my jaws before he will even consider moving forward with the braces.
It's a funny thing about this whole process. Braces wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for acting because even though I am old, I look like I'm about 16, so yay, HS all over haha! But the splint is huuuuge! And sooo noticable to me! Check this out!
(I'm trying to look like a gangsta)
(check out the fancy nostril flare!)Well, that was yesterday, just after I got the splint. It is totally removable, but the goal is to wear it 24/7 and to hopefully to reposition my bite so that my teeth meet properly. Right now they don't and actually with this splint it feels so weird because my teeth are biting how they really should, which makes my mouth look out of alignment because it's making my teeth meet, instead of my jaw figuring out a comfortable position on it's own.
Today is another story...this is me this morning:
(no bueno)
But, after all the great blogs I have read and sites, this has to be worth it. The benefits of what this surgery will do waaaay outweigh the negatives. I will be able to eat and not get a headache that lasts for days afterwards, my upper jaw will be pretty! And when I bite down my teeth will actually meet like they should.
I'll try to update this as often as I can-I am still really early in the process. Thanks for joining me on this journey =)
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