Surgery

So. Tomorrow it's a pre-op workup for Jaws' jaws. Oh, the irony. If you've been a faithful reader, you know that 'Jaws' was the nickname given by my uncle, because I got all my teeth at a very young age (get it, jaws, shark, teeth?). You would also know that I've had some sleep problems (that's putting it mildly) that we think now are related to a somewhat underdeveloped jaw (mandible, actually). I'd like to think I wear it with grace, but when you wake up nearly 300 times every night because you can't breathE, something must be done.

This was the reason for the San Francisco trip. I went to Stanford, the mecca of the sleep medicine world, for a 5th and hopefully final sleep study before we proceed to the OR and advance both upper and lower jaws. The fight with the insurance company for coverage came down to the deadline. If it wasn't December, the next available time Stanford had was March. March!

This is what they plan to do, if they will actually commit to it, as for some reason 4 other sleep studies weren't convincing enough.

Just ignore the little bit about the chin. We're not doing that. Yes, they make a cut in the bone around the nose level and advance the upper jaw (you have to advance both because of the whole bite/occlusion thing) and plate it back together. They also make cuts in the bone behind the teeth and advance the lower jaw. They fill in the gaps with bone from your hip or skull or synthetic stuff. I'm hoping for the skull option--no scars, no foreign materials.

I'll be wired shut for a month once we set an OR date.

Lovely, eh?