When I was twenty-one, all I got for Christmas that year was a large dose of anesthesia followed by six hours of maxillofacial (jaw) surgery. That’s right party people, this cheerleader’s cheers ceased on that cold December day. My parent’s paid a pretty penny that year to render me a “Mute Mouth.” My guess is they were in the waiting room cheering,
“Lean to the left,
Lean to the right.
She’s finally silent…
Alright, alright, alright!!!”
I was born with an open bite ~ that means when I bit into a turkey sandwich, for example, my teeth were incapable of gripping the bread:. The meat, the lettuce, the cheese, “the substance?” Well, it slipped right through my teeth like an ‘N Sync song. And can you believe that I never once noticed that other 
people didn’t have this dental disorder? In my world, when one bit into food, the heart of it was elusive.
If I wanted to eat a bagel, for example, I’d have to break it apart piece by piece.(Bagel Bites didn’t yet exist then, by the way). And eating a slice of pizza? That’s finger food at it’s finest…but not when you can’t bite into it! It’s not difficult to deduce then, that when teeth don’t touch, one’s grippers don’t grip!
My surgery involved sawing my teeth right out of my head. Yep, picture a pair of those chattering teeth that you wind up. (Yeah, like that).
Except in my case, the surgeon actually removed my chompers from my cranium entirely and then set them on the side table like an appetizer. Once everything inside my mouth was readjusted to mirror a “normal persons mouth,” they strapped those 32 little suckers back into my head using stainless steel wires, nuts, bolts and metal screws.
I was speechless. Literally.
For the next six weeks, I wore wire cutters as a necklace “just in case,”
I never had time to use them, however. I was vomiting every few hours for the first four days. I know this isn’t lady-like talk, but I was puking like a clam bake contestant winner allergic to shell fish! Turns out that not only was my dental disorder out of the norm, so too was my intolerance to anesthesia. I wasn’t supposed to use the wire cutters unless I feared I was going to get sick, but I was already getting sick on a regular basis. And if I cut the wires? Well, then I had to go back under with anesthesia to get wired shut again. It was, at the very least, a cyclical disaster that I wanted no part of. Thus, each time I puked, I could feel the vomit squeak its way out my cheeks and nostrils and burn its way to freedom.
Ahhh, admit it, that’s a whole lot of sexy right there! HA!
I won’t get in to what my diet consisted of…it flat-out didn’t exist! If it wasn’t of the thin, liquid variety and able to travel easily in and out of the syringe, then I didn’t drink it. I lost 25 pounds in 45 days. My body was so skinny and emaciated and my face so massively swollen that I looked like a lollipop.
“Let me see you tootsie roll…”
I would like to take this moment to publicly thank my college boyfriend for baking me that plate of brownies in celebration of my jaw surgery. Since I can talk now, I want to ask, What kind of cruel man would bake a plate of brownies for a girl who’s wired shut? Sheesh. If I ever lose my fingers I’ll be sure to let you know so you can bring me a piano!
Ah, yes. Besides losing a considerable amount of weight, I also lost feeling in my chin. To this day, I can’t feel the right side of my chin. So naturally where on my face do you guess the rove spaghetti noodle or biscuit crumb likes to get stuck now? You got it… smack dab on the right side of my chin. Ugh, that’s just perfect! What an entirely horrific experience.
I felt my face, however, when I awoke a couple of years ago with a swollen cheek and massive headache. My jaw felt like it had been crushed by a hammer. I felt around inside my mouth and suddenly knew exactly what was wrong.
I dialed my boss to call in sick to head to the oral surgeon:
Me: “Uh, hi Scott, I can’t come in today because I need to see my jaw surgeon”
Boss: “Everything okay?”
Me: “Sure, everything is fine.
Boss: “Female problems?”
Me: “Uh, no. Well, you’ll probably think so…”
“What I mean is that I can’t come in to work today because, Ummm…”
Wait for it…
“I literally have a screw loose!!!”
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