Metal Mouth Message Board

I am in no way a surgeon, but I've noticed that the people on this board who have had a problem with delayed unions all grind their teeth at night. Mostly these things turn out to be delayed (rather then non) unions, and you'll just end up with extra restrictions until the bone heals. The only perso...

I'd also add than Shanalouis has had an unusually hard and long recovery (8 months and two surgeries!), and so has had a long time to sit around and think about how the surgeries are turning out. I'd have done *much* more complaining and worrying if I'd been through as much as she has. I've also not...

Your profile is totally amazing, and your frontal view is catching up. I think you're going to look great by the time it's all finished.

I agree with bbsadmin - your profile looks really amazing. My son was home for the first 4 weeks after surgery and by the end of that time, only his profile really looked good. From the front, his face just seemed puffy and out of proportion. By three months (when I next saw him) he looked really ha...

The thing about going on what the surgeon expects to do, is that that may change as the surgery gets closer. We went to three consults - two of them with different doctors at our local teaching hospital, and one with another surgeon (who actually also teaches at the hospital, although we didn't meet...

I think the surgery is especially hard for people who are happy with their appearance beforehand. For my son, his jaw was so odd/deformed that he was miserable with how he looked. He didn't even ask to see the projected "after" pictures - he just figured that anything that fixed his jaw wo...

I know the swelling has gone down some, but you're still obviously really puffed up. My son didn't begin to look even slightly normal until 3 or 4 weeks out, and he didn't start to look "handsome" until I saw him this last visit (about 3 months out). It looks like your nose wasn't very aff...

Yeah, it's surprisingly emotionally draining. My son was in a constant state of panic until he got his bands loosened, even though he was actually getting in enough air (according to the readings). Three days is right around the peak for swelling - it should start getting better after this.

this is really normal post surgery. My son was able to get just a bit of air through his nose, but he really couldn't breathe through his mouth because it was so foamy. Most people can't breathe through their nose at all. You're both really close to the turning point when it starts to clear up. Are ...

Doesn't matter if they think it's necessary. The deformity is there, *I* it's necessary to treat it, and last I checked, I was the one offering to pay them for that treatment. No, it does matter. You can offer to pay, but they still get to decide what kinds of cases they want to treat. If they don'...

It's absolutely reasonable to be having a hard time - it is really hard to have to go through this surgery more then once. We found going through it once pretty darn hard. If you have friends/family around, it's a good time to really lean on them. If you don't, or if they're not good for leaning, yo...

I'm not in the UK, so I don't know how things work over there. Over here, when we wanted to get a good reading on what course to take with my son, we went to the local teaching hospital. For us, that's a big university with a large dental/orthodontic school, with the best name in our state. Although...

I think this surgery is harder for people who are happy with their appearance already - the outcome is so hard to predict. For my son, his jaw was so messed up that any change that brought his face back into more normal proportions would improve his appearance. There really wasn't any part of face, ...

I'm really sorry to hear that - I know that's not the news you wanted to hear. If it were my jaw, I'd want to know alot more from the surgeon about what went wrong the first time, why he wasn't able to stabilize the jaw once he knew there was a problem, why his staff was so unresponsive to your (cor...

Yes, you should pay attention to all of the compliments you're getting. You look terrific!