The History of Me..... Or, My Mouth At Least

Hello my lovelies!

So this last month has been a whirlwind. It feels like it was over before it began! To tell you the truth, I really didn't get much done at all this month. I've only really been feeling up to doing the bare minimum and nothing else. I hate that, but getting an operation done on your mouth closely followed by crazy allergies really takes a lot out of you.

Now, some of you might be wondering what exactly what I had done during this operation. In order to tell you that, I think you might need some back story. I decided to give you the long version because I'm about to have even more stuff done and I thought I would just go ahead and get the story out of the way now :) So, here goes nothing....

I was born with a cleft lip which was just a smidgen away from being a cleft palette. Because my cleft went so close to my palette, it affected my nose as well, causing one side of my nose to…. well, not form correctly. Basically one nostril was much smaller than the other and that added to the fact that I also had a deviated septum….. I've always had more trouble breathing than most.

Anyways, growing up with my whole cleft lip issue wasn’t always the most fun thing in the world. When I was only a few months old, I went in and had my lip closed up so that was taken care of early on. However, the operation left a scar and I was frequently asked about it, sometimes even teased. That and my lopsided nose fueled the little immature children that I socialized with and caused me to be really insecure about my face basically up until I was about 16. Braces were another issue. My teeth were horrible so I really didn’t notice for a while that I was missing one where the cleft was. I’m pretty sure I went through at least 10 false teeth on account of me breaking/losing them while I wore braces. I was kind of an experiment for my orthodontist haha.

Two years ago I had surgery on my nose, both to fix the deviated septum and to open up my nostril with plastic surgery. Recovering from that was an adventure but now I can actually halfway breathe out of the nostril. (although there still is a bit of scar tissue in there…. seeing as both the ENT and the plastic surgeon were working on me at pretty much the same time, the plastic surgeon couldn’t do as much as he wanted so I’m probably going to have another operation done soon to get the scar tissue out and maybe open my nostril up even more.) After that operation, I got many a judgmental look after I told people what exactly I had done. People hear “plastic surgery” and they automatically think it was purely cosmetic reasons and they judge. While I did want my nostrils to be even, I wanted even more to be able to breathe like a normal person so no, I am not one of “those people” thank you very much.

So now just recently we’ve started to tackle the whole “that tooth never grew in so we’re going to need a semi-permanent fake one in there until we can do an implant….. if THAT’S even possible” procedure. Right before I got my wisdom teeth taken out a few months ago, I replaced the fake tooth I was sporting at the time (one attached to a wire which was attached behind my teeth…. it was an ugly little thing but it didn’t budge and I liked it enough) with what I have now: a clear, plastic retainer with not one but two fake teeth in it. Basically, the gap left by the nonexistent tooth had grown and one big tooth in that space just wouldn’t work. I really didn’t care about sticking another fake one in the space as long as there wasn’t a huge gaping hole there.

Ok so this retainer thing is a pain in the butt. I can’t eat with it in, it needs to be cleaned constantly, I have left it at home more than once and so I’ve had to turn back around and get it (causing me to be late for lots of stuff)…. it just isn’t convenient. But we got it because, at the time, we were planning on doing all sorts of procedures this year so I could have the implant done with before I left for college. Well, clearly that plan didn’t pan out. Basically I’ve seen at least a half a dozen people about this and what they’ve all been thinking is that my cleft goes too far up so an implant might not be possible. Even if it is, it’ll be much more radical than we were thinking it would be.

So what we decided to do was go ahead and do the gum graft (which my dentist and periodontist insisted I do because apparently if I didn’t do it soon, my gum on either side of my cleft would start receding and cause me lots of problems and it wouldn’t be good. such encouraging words.) so that would be done and then just pop a bridge in there just to get me through college and we would address the possibility of an implant after I got school out of the way.

So that's where I am now. Am I a normal cleft case? Well I don’t know because I’ve never met anyone remotely in my situation before. I wish I knew someone like me…. someone who was born with a cleft lip that I could talk to and sympathize with. Frankly, having to go through all of this has really stunk and I have wished countless times that I could have been born normal so that I could have a pretty nose and nice teeth and a scarless lip and wouldn’t have to go into a new dentist office and hear “you’re going to be a challenge” for the millionth time.

I guess one of the best parts of all this is the knowledge that I’ve gained from this whole thing…. the fact that, if I do meet someone either like me or with a child like me, I can at least encourage them and help them get through this without throwing a chair through the wall. Also, I’ve kind of gained a better view on myself…. like, dealing with the teasing and stuff with my nose and lip has helped me focus on the things that I really like about myself and not focusing on small details like my stupid nose.

And, above all, I’ve really learned to appreciate breathing in general!

So that's my story as of now. I still have at least two if not three more operations to look forward to after college, but right now I'm taking a break. It's a lot to go through.

Ok, I've rambled on for long enough. I hope all of you are having a great week!

Much love,

Andrea