"As long as I don't come out looking like Penelope..."

Surgery is two weeks away, and today was my official pre-op appointment with the surgeon. The objective of  the day was pretty straight forward, take impressions, assessments, and measurements of my mouth and face so that I don't come out of the operating room looking like Frankenstein. It was pretty much an hour of standard things that have already happened during the good ol' orthodontic years. However, one thing was a little more pressing.

I was presented with the decision to choose (more like consent to) having double jaw surgery rather than having a procedure on only my lower jaw. For me, it wasn't a difficult choice. My surgeon made it perfectly clear that with double jaw surgery there is a longer healing time, a few more hours under the knife, and a higher risk. However, with DJS there is a greater chance that my bite will truly come to full closure, as well as a lower chance of the open bite recurring after the operation. Considering that the whole point of the surgery is to close my bite, I was fully prepared to roll with the punches, but my doctor had one reservation. By breaking my upper jaw, my nose may become slightly more upturned. What was my reply? "As long as I don't come out looking like Penelope, I really don't care."

Penelope, as played by Christina Ricci in the movie Penelope.