A perspective from a lower jaw/genio patient

[Guest guest]

I posted here a few weeks ago concerning the orthognathic surgery

that I underwent on Sept 23rd. By the way: I am male, 26 years old.

It's been just over a month since surgery and healing is going quite

well.

My lower jaw was advanced 8mm and my chin was advanced 4mm. For the

most part, I am happy with the results although my chin advancement

was not as dramatic as I was hoping for. Honestly, I was under the

impression that the tip of my chin would come out as far as my lower

lip, but it does not. Not even close, really. 4mm is barely anything

at all. It's just over 1/3rd the length of your pinky finger! That's

hardly enough to create a decent chin.

In fact, most people that have seen me since surgery say: " yeah, you

look good! But I kind of thought your chin would stick out further. "

On the other hand, to say there isn't a difference between the

before/after would be an outright lie. So, in the end - I'm

pleased, but not as pleased as I thought I'd be.

It might have been of more benefit had I honestly admitted to others

that my primary motivation for surgery was to improve my aesthetics.

Had I done that, I may have wound up in the office of a plastic

surgeon who specializes in facial appearance. Instead, I pretended

like it didn't bother me because, otherwise, people would know how

insecure I was about my jaw structure. Nevertheless, I needed the

braces to correct a bad occlusion - so going the orthodontic route

wasn't a total loss by any means.

Anyways, since the surgery I've noticed I'm capable of seeing things

in two ways:

1) I can obsessively scrutinize my face and compare my features to

some perfect standard of attractiveness and feel self pity...

-or-

2) I can be grateful for this entire experience and realize I was a

decent looking guy to begin with who has been blessed with a nice

improvement.

There's really no other choice than #2. For my personal situation, #1

would only lead to depressing vanity and becoming self-absorbed. Now

that's not true for everyone, of course. But it would be true for me.

Also, in the past 2 years that I've learned about this stuff, I have

come across some truly heart breaking cases of children with

deformities far worse than mine. Treacher- syndrome, for

example. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a young child

going to school with such a condition. Or I consider the men and

women coming home from from Iraq with missing arms and legs.

Horrible.

By no means am I looking down on those people. I'm merely stating

that, considering the full scope of possibilities, I would have to be

blind to my own luck and good fortune in order to continue feeling

bad about my jaw.

In any event, I just wanted to share this with everyone since we're

all dealing with orthognathic surgery in some way or another.

[Guest guest]

I posted here a few weeks ago concerning the orthognathic surgery

that I underwent on Sept 23rd. By the way: I am male, 26 years old.

It's been just over a month since surgery and healing is going quite

well.

My lower jaw was advanced 8mm and my chin was advanced 4mm. For the

most part, I am happy with the results although my chin advancement

was not as dramatic as I was hoping for. Honestly, I was under the

impression that the tip of my chin would come out as far as my lower

lip, but it does not. Not even close, really. 4mm is barely anything

at all. It's just over 1/3rd the length of your pinky finger! That's

hardly enough to create a decent chin.

In fact, most people that have seen me since surgery say: " yeah, you

look good! But I kind of thought your chin would stick out further. "

On the other hand, to say there isn't a difference between the

before/after would be an outright lie. So, in the end - I'm

pleased, but not as pleased as I thought I'd be.

It might have been of more benefit had I honestly admitted to others

that my primary motivation for surgery was to improve my aesthetics.

Had I done that, I may have wound up in the office of a plastic

surgeon who specializes in facial appearance. Instead, I pretended

like it didn't bother me because, otherwise, people would know how

insecure I was about my jaw structure. Nevertheless, I needed the

braces to correct a bad occlusion - so going the orthodontic route

wasn't a total loss by any means.

Anyways, since the surgery I've noticed I'm capable of seeing things

in two ways:

1) I can obsessively scrutinize my face and compare my features to

some perfect standard of attractiveness and feel self pity...

-or-

2) I can be grateful for this entire experience and realize I was a

decent looking guy to begin with who has been blessed with a nice

improvement.

There's really no other choice than #2. For my personal situation, #1

would only lead to depressing vanity and becoming self-absorbed. Now

that's not true for everyone, of course. But it would be true for me.

Also, in the past 2 years that I've learned about this stuff, I have

come across some truly heart breaking cases of children with

deformities far worse than mine. Treacher- syndrome, for

example. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a young child

going to school with such a condition. Or I consider the men and

women coming home from from Iraq with missing arms and legs.

Horrible.

By no means am I looking down on those people. I'm merely stating

that, considering the full scope of possibilities, I would have to be

blind to my own luck and good fortune in order to continue feeling

bad about my jaw.

In any event, I just wanted to share this with everyone since we're

all dealing with orthognathic surgery in some way or another.