1. Double Jaw Surgery: an intro to my journey of braces and surgery as a vegan freelance performer
- Claire de Lunacy
- Jun 19, 2018
- 10 min read
Updated: Jun 20, 2018
Life's funny isn't it.
I told myself I wouldn't write a blog about my #doublejawsurgery, as there were already so many out there that I wouldn't have anything to say that hadn't already been said, or anything impactful to add.
The web is already saturated with the experiences of dozens of people that have been through jaw surgery, so I didn't think it would be worth my while, or that I would feel inclined to do so.
This morning, however, 12 days post-op, I woke up with a desperate urge to share my own journey - not only because I have already received several messages on Instagram from individuals wanting to know more about what I went through, but because I realised that there are parts of my journey which are rather unique, and also I discovered there are some things I that I WISH I had known before going into hospital on the 7th June 2018, and would like to share with you.
So let's start at the beginning, since this blog will be featuring on my website.
I am a freelance performer who goes by the title of Claire de Lunacy. I also run my own performance and events company, You Topia Productions. Working for yourself is amazing and awful and exciting and terrifying all at the same time. It's a whole bundle of everything and it consumes your life, whether you want it to or not.
As you might imagine, if you work for yourself there is no such thing as sick pay, which makes undertaking surgery that bit more difficult, as you have to support yourself financially for as long as possible, and you constantly worry about when the soonest possible moment is that you can get yourself back to work, so that you can get paid...
Another thing to explain: I am a #vegan.
I became vegan in April 2017, after having been semi-vegan for some time.
(If you're curious, I do it for the animals and the environment, in that order)
This fact, and the fact that I am a freelancer (and specifically a performer), were the major reasons behind me wanting to write my own blog about my orthognathic experience, as I feel they affect my journey in terms of both diet and lifestyle. It may be unlikely for large numbers of vegans or performers to be undergoing similar treatment, but even if I help just a handful of people through sharing my experience, then my job is done :)
So, back to the jaw surgery.
I was offered braces and #orthognathicsurgery aged just 18 to correct my mild #underbite. At the time, the issue was only a mild aesthetic one (or so I remember from my perspective - it could well be that the orthodontist told me that if I didn't correct it, I would run into problems later in life, but if he did, I don't remember). I wasn't worried enough about my underbite to want to undergo the pain and embarrassment of braces at univerity, and certainly WAS very concerned by the idea of surgery to correct something that didn't seem too important. I also didn't want to change my face and "not look like me anymore". So I turned it all down.
Fast forward to age 22, and my underbite has developed further into an open bite, with only my very back 4 molars touching. I had difficulty eating, I had a 'heavy' jaw, was experiencing some jaw tension and pain, and my jaw even locked a few times. I decided it was finally time to do something about it.
It took a trip back to my hometown in Essex - a 5 hour journey from where I now lived in Manchester - to get my old orthodontist to pull out the records from years ago and refer me to a specialist up North. When I finally got an appointment several months later, I was informed I has 3 wisdom teeth which hadn't emerged which would need to be removed before the braces went on. This would be a minor surgery but under general anaesthetic.
(I would like to point out at this stage that I am based in the UK and everything was done via the NHS. This makes my experience very different to those in the USA or elsewhere, as treatment is free, but incredibly slow, and resources very stretched)
It took several further months to get an appointment to get these teeth out. I went alone, and discovered to my horror that I have a fear of anaesthetic. I tried to sleep on the floor while I waited, as this is the #NHS so they tell everyone to come in at 7am, but you have no idea what time your surgery will actually be. As I was day case elective surgery, I wasn't given a bed but just a singular chair, and nothing to do. The no food, no water after midnight thing had me feeling pretty rough so I tried to block it out through sleep, until I felt so poorly that I staggered to the desk and asked when I would be going in. They said I was next up and got me in my gown.
Then the fear.
I had a #panicattack on the way to the operating room with uncontrollable crying and hyperventilating, and then again when on the table as the drug went into my veins. It felt like cold death creeping up my arm as they made me count back from 10.
Next thing I know I am waking up in the recovery room. People say they feel like no time has passed but I am sure I dreamed while I was out.
I had seen many videos of people coming round after having teeth out and being generally "high". This did not happen to me. I was terrified, confused, covered in blood and felt very cold. I looked down and saw 2 little fragments of teeth as well as blood stains on my hospital gown. I had another panic attack.
Then I was taken to the day care ward and monitored by nurses until they brought round food later that afternoon. I was given a cheese sandwich. Did no-one know what surgery I had just had?! I explained that I couldn't eat solids and was brought a yoghurt and orange juice (this was before I was fully vegan). I remember being pretty out of it and feeling a bit sad and left in the lurch without any information about how I was doing or when I could go home. When I finally plucked up the courage to ask they said I could go home any time, so I got picked up, and slept for the rest of the day with a bad headache, but luckily no nausea.
The next day, once I had slept off the anaesthesia, I felt really rather perky, with very little pain and back to having lots of energy! I even made my first ever video documenting my journey (okay, yes, back at the beginning I thought I might blog or vlog or whatever, but over time I forgot to video much and gave up on the idea).
Here's a still image taken from that video (where I am hilariously chipmunk-like, although since this was just removal of teeth, I never worried about it once because no changes to my face structure had been made, so I knew that once the swelling had gone down I would be back to normal!)
The recovery process was really very smooth - #liquiddiet for a couple of days, a bit of careful teeth-brushing, then back to normal.
Here are two videos I made during that process:
(Some of the content above is duplicated here)
It took another three months for them to apply #braces to my teeth, and bizarrely they added just the brackets a week before the wires and elastics, leaving me with extremely abrasive sharp metal cutting my poor mouth into little slivers. I didn't remember my school friends complaining about such pain with their braces in high school?!
I happened to have a first date with a guy the day after these got put on, and let's just say that it was eventful attempting to eat with what felt like a mouth full of glass...
Luckily, once the wires and colourful brackets were put on a few days later, some of this pain was relieved as they're no longer as sharp, but with the addition of the wires came my first experience of the pain of your teeth being pulled out of place...
When the orthodontist first attached the wires to my teeth, I turned to her and said, "It's a nice kind of pressure, isn't it."
She said that this probably wouldn't last - and boy was she right! I had returned straight to work (I was working as a Business Travel Consultant at the time), and didn't notice too much pain until I tried to eat a mid-afternoon snack of a packet of crisps. Biting into the thin multigrain crisp felt like a hammer had been swung into my mouth. I found out very fast that crunchy foods were off limits after your wires are tightened.
Luckily the pain only lasted a few days until my teeth settled in their new position, and the pain became slowly less every time I went to get my wires tightened from then on, until I hardly noticed anything at all on tightening day at the end of one year of braces.
I didn't manage to document much about my journey with braces except this one video - I didn't even remember to do progress pictures as my teeth straightened.
This video was shot 6 months into my braces journey in February 2017.
At the time braces went on, I was in a totally different line of work. It wasn't until September 2016 that I decided to return to my one true love - performing. It had been a dream since I was a very small child, and I had spent almost every spare minute of my youth either taking dance classes, or taking part in the school musical.
But back then I was nervous about a career in the #performingarts and didn't know what options were open to me. I thought it was West End or nothing, and didn't think I had it in me to survive the bitchiness of stage school, or the dog-eat-dog nature I imagined all performing arts careers had. So instead I pursued languages at University, and my first job when I graduated was International Hostess on board cruise ships with Italian Cruise company Costa (yes, the ones that sank. No, I wasn't on that ship).
It was during my year on the ships that I experience the most problems with my jaw and came back to the UK to finally do something about it. When I returned, after having started my working life with perhaps the single most exciting, varied, and privileged job one could be lucky enough to land, I felt absolutely trapped in normal 'muggle' jobs. I fell from job to job: never really settling, never really satisfied.
When I finally got the courage to go back to the arts (the story of which I MIGHT divulge in another very different post, sometime, if anyone wants to hear it), braces started to affect me more. It is frustrating to have braces as an adult no matter what job you do, but particularly in any career where your face and voice are important (and don't tell me that braces don't affect the way you speak, because they do).
I found I really started to resent my braces as they not only knocked my confidence, but I worried they would stop me getting jobs as they are quite a specific 'look'. When I got professional photos and a showreel done I made sure no hint of metal was visible, so that producers and events organisers couldn't judge me on my braces. Career aside, though, I did learn to love them. My face has now known braces for nearly 2 full years at the time of writing this...
During the course of the year and 3 months I had braces on before being deemed ready for #surgery, my teeth moved from an open bite to merely just an underbite. For the first time in years I had several teeth touching, not just the molars at the back, and my smile was already much improved.
I had to wear elastics for a short while as mentioned in the video, but this didn't last long. In the end, a year or so down the line, I wish they had kept them on me longer (more about that later, but the short version is that now, 12 days post-op, I have quite a big overcorrection with my bite and it is currently an overbite with a small overjet. I can't help but worry that if I had been told to wear my elastics longer to make the underbite worse initially, this wouldn't have happened, but really it's far too early to judge).
After a joint clinic appointment in September 2017 with the orthodontist and surgeons, it was finally decided that I was ready for surgery, and so I went on the waiting list, with little indication of when the surgery might fall.
It wasn't until May 2018 that I finally received a letter giving me a date for surgery. During those 8 months waiting, I had very minor adjustments made continuously to my teeth, including filing some of my lower teeth to make them more narrow. Don't ask why this was necessary - I don't know. But I do know that whilst totally painless, this procedure was hair-raising. Just imagine being able to feel and hear your teeth being filed with a thin metal wire... Ugh.
The date was set for 7th June. I knew that at any time they could cancel so I didn't really fully acknowledge the surgery as being real until about 3 weeks before, as I didn't want to get my hopes up. I had a couple of final checks pre-surgery, including pre-op assessment at the hospital where the surgery would be taking place. Here they weighed me and measured my height and blood pressure, and I tried to explain about my veganism and how I wouldn't be able to eat the regular hospital food, and about my strong fear of anaesthesia. Sadly I would later find out these things are just not communicated across NHS departments.
And I think that draws me to the end of my first post.
I totally intended to talk about the surgery itself, but I have somehow told my story leading up to surgery in such detail that I think a separate post is needed to break it all up. Hopefully you've enjoyed finding out about my personal experience. Feel free to get in touch with any questions or comments and I will do my best to respond.
:)
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