Hook, Line, and Sinker

   Only 8 days remain until mission double jaw surgery takes place and today's pre-surgical agenda included surgical hooks. What exactly are surgical hooks you might ask? They are small little antennae-like nubbins that are placed on the wire of my braces. The purpose of these otherworldly metal bits is to add places for the mouth binding rubber bands (or wire) to latch on to after surgery so that my jaws stay nice and closed. Surprisingly enough, the hooks aren't even that annoying, and I'm sure I'll be used to them within a few days.

   Now that you all can see my bite up close, I figure that it's time to explain just what is going on. No I'm not laughing, the picture above shows my mouth completely closed, and the reason for my teeth not touching in the front is my anterior open bite. My bite is caused by a congenital deformity of, well, basically my entire face, and the deformity results in the lovely 5mm gap we see above. The goal of surgery is to close my teeth, reduce the gumminess of my smile, and fix the cant of my jaw. And the goal of that goal is to make it easier for me to eat, talk, breath, etc. I don't know about you guys, but in my opinion those are some pretty important functions.


   Aside from all of the technical talk, I can't relay just how many times I've heard "are you excited?" this week and each time I have had the pleasure of replying "that's not exactly the right word." There is not a snowball's chance in hell that I am excited to partake in a 6 hour surgery, yet at the same time I'm not nervous either. It might just be that D-day is too far in the future for me to spend much time worrying; only time will tell. So the word I'll choose to describe how I'm feeling at the moment will be short and sweet: ready.