Insurance covered my consult so I just paid $60 copay. They took my BP, look at the pics and x-rays I brought, and then the doc looked in my mouth and we had a 15-minute conversation.
I liked the surgeon, he was really nice. He was very soft-spoken. I am used to doctors being opinionated and, not "loud" exactly, just... authoritative. (Which they should be, since they are the authorities!) He said the same thing as all the other doctors. Lower jaw is "relatively" too large - it's actually normal size and my upper jaw too small. He recommended a 1-piece LeFort I. Insurance code D7946.
We talked about the alternatives to surgery and he asked if my ortho had talked about "camouflage" with me, meaning trying to disguise the malocclusion by moving only the teeth. I said that he did, and he said he could even try it out with just rubber bands, but that he didn't think it would work, and I didn't want the expense or frustration of still needing surgery anyway and having to reverse all the movement.
We also talked about sleep apnea. I'm not sure if I have it or not - I know I can't sleep on my back because right before I fall asleep I make an involuntary noise that wakes me up. I have chronic back and neck pain caused in part by stomach sleeping, so believe me when I say I have TRIED AND TRIED to learn to sleep on my back. I don't know if this is apnea or not. Depending on the insurance approval I may try to get tested for it. But even then, I am overweight, so I am sure if I was diagnosed insurance would say I should lose weight first to see if that helps before they would approve the surgery. (Which I would agree with, but just saying hypothetically, if it was declined based on my occlusion and related difficulties alone.)
Speaking of which, here's my insurance question. Obviously there is no substitute for actually getting the approval from the insco but just wanted anyone's opinion or experience. Aetna, my company, has a published policy for approving orthognathic surgery. Here it is: http://www.aetna.com/cpb/medical/data/1_99/0095.html They will approve it for any overjet 0 to negative value (mine is 0) if it is documented to cause masticatory dysfunction. My question is, does the wear and chipping on my front teeth count as dysfunction caused by my edge-to-edge? On my lateral incisors the chipping is pretty significant (10% of the teeth according to one of the orthos I saw) and will need to be bonded after I finish ortho. On my right front tooth there was a chip that my dentist fixed recently with composite. I also have superficial fracture lines on my front teeth (no known trauma). The first ortho I saw told me even if I didn't get braces I should get a night guard or my teeth would continue to wear down significantly. I'm hoping these things will have an impact on the surgery approval. Any insight?
Here's something that was weird... he said ONE WEEK of recovery!!!
lol, I mean, I guess that's good news, but gosh, I thought I'd still be getting nose bleeds at 1 week. I would still be on a liquid diet at that point, with its associated weakness and lack of energy. I work 11-hour days in a call center. I'm not sure at all I'll be up for going back to work after 1 week. I asked him about going back so soon since I talk for a living and he said, "That may or may not affect your recovery, but you could maybe take a week and a half." 
Everything I've seen online says 3-6 weeks. I saw one girl on YouTube who went back to work at 2 weeks but couldn't make it through a single day and decided to take another week. We will cross that bridge when we come to it of course, but if I do take time off I will need the surgeon to sign short-term disability paperwork so I don't lose my salary during recovery.All in all it was a good consult. They are going to submit the preapproval with the surgeon's letter and I should know in a few weeks. I told him the timeline I'm on for getting my braces on (about one month from now) and he said I should know by then.
