Everyone looks at my neck: “What’s that trailing on the floor behind you, ma’am?”
I don’t even have anyone to take me home from the hosp., let alone wait on me for two days . . . I have plenty of friends, but they’re in Washington, London, New Orleans, L.A. . .
AwSnappity, Zagloba -
Happy to talk about the surgery, it was a huge deal in my life (anybody who knows me in real life has heard the story).
Let me try to answer your questions:
I didn’t have to have my jaw wired shut - it was shut with very thick rubber bands. I could open my mouth less than 1/4 inch - I had to eat/drink with a syringe for almost a week (yes, I lost a ton of weight, yes I gained it all back nearly immediately). I lived on carnation instant breakfast and milkshakes.
The worst pain was around my nostrils. I imagine to raise my upper palate (they removed a section of upper jaw above the front teeth) they just had to pull back my face to see what they were doing. No nose blowing for a specific length of time (which I don’t remember) and it really really hurt.
New dentists are always surprised by my x-rays, I’ve never had a filling, but I have two permanent bone clips on my upper jaw and two tiny screws in my lower jaw. They had to go through the face to put the screws in properly, but the scars are so incredibly tiny. On one side, I can’t see it at all, the other side, I must LOOK for the itty bitty pale white line. All the other surgery was done inside the mouth and there is some extensive scarring around the bottom (top?) of the gumlines (not that anyone but my dentist can ever see it).
I stayed in the hospital one night and I was out of work for 2 weeks. I thought I recovered very quickly, there have been only two long term drawbacks:
A. The numbness I mentioned earlier, most of the times I don’t even notice it. It’s not really “numb” it’s more like a light tingling, like an asleep body part waking up. There are also some “switched nerves” in my mouth. If you touch the back gum on the bottom right side, I feel it on the left side of my tongue. If you touch the upper gum on the top left side, I feel it on the upper left side of my lip. Weird - but not terrible.
B. A slight tenderness in my right jaw hinge. I only notice this when I try to eat very large pieces of sushi or doing anything that holds the jaw open for an extended period of time.
I’m sorry I don’t remember the details about how the surgeon got the insurance company to agree. I was in Dallas, TX at the time. The only weirdness about the insurance, after the surgery, the company didn’t want to 1) cover the cost of anaesthesia (I could have the surgery, but I had to be awake?) 2) cover the x-rays before the surgery (I could have the surgery, but the surgeon couldn’t see in advance what he would be doing?) I fought the insurance company on both points and I won - they paid.
It was definitely worth the pain, numbness and recovery time - it made a huge difference in my face - I look 100% different (for the better).
Thanks for the answers.
During your recovery at home, did you need help from anyone, or could you take care of yourself?
I would have failed the pencil test the day I got my first bra.
The way I always heard the pencil test described was, you tuck a pencil up under your breast where it lies against your torso, then raise your arm over your head. If the pencil doesn’t hit the floor, you’ve failed.
I’ve seen pictures of you, Eve; I can only hope I’ll look that good in twenty years. I probably won’t. The women in my family tend towards a grizzled half-crazed pioneer woman appearence after a certain age. You’re all classy and stuff.
I definitely could not have driven myself home from the hospital. My mom came to stay with me for 3 days and my boyfriend was also living with me. The medication really zonked me out - I’m pretty sure I would have needed some kind of assistance for the first 2-3 days. Also, because I wasn’t eating very much, at one point I had a real dizzy spell in the bathroom and needed John to help me get back in bed.
You know, Eve, I’ve just been looking up prices for all sorts of procedures, feeling like I’m so imperfect and how I’d love to fix/lift this and that, a little here, a little there…
Then I read your OP. I sit here thinking, “Why… I haven’t even tried to dress nicely, in a flattering way, that would perhaps make some of this not matter so much to me.”
Eve, you have always been the classy lady I aspire to be one day (ooooh, I do have a long way to go yet). It didn’t even occur to me that you might think about some nipping/tucking yourself. I’ve only seen pictures, of course, but the way you hold yourself, the way you dress… I think you are so lovely just the way you are. I can only hope to look half as good as you when I am your age.
To those who have no chins, I feel your pain. I hate my profile. I think it makes me look utterly ridiculous. Oh, to have a lovely chin… and good teeth. My teeth aren’t nearly as crooked as they once were, since I had braces, but they are still very uneven. And too small. All you people with lovely chins and nice, even teeth, you don’t even know how lucky you are… if I had lovely teeth, I would smile non-stop, every day, for the rest of my life. You might hate me for being so happy, but I really would!
There will always be something, I think. Things I “fix” now I may be happy with, but as I age, other things will make my unhappy… I worry about getting things pulled back so tight it no longer looks real. Certainly, we’d all like to look ethereal if only we could, but not alien.
I said this once about Raquel Welch, when she was 40 and I was 16. Mom said, “You will not look as good as she does when you’re 40. You don’t look that good at 16.”
I think it was Katharine Hepburn who once said, “At a certain point in a woman’s life, she stops being a sex object and becomes a force of nature.” I’m all for that!
Maybe you could use one of your mother’s assistants?
That’s sweet, and thanks, Marlitharn, too . . . It all comes of working in an office overflowing with gorgeous, stick-thin 20-somethings and pushing fifty and realizing I’ll never be a size 10 again and that everything is two inches lower than it used to be (and I’m unemployable in publishing because I’m over forty) . . . All culminating with that “Cathy” AACCCCKK!! moment in the dressing room when I saw my profile hoving into view . . .
It’s something we all have to deal with at a certain age, unless we’re blessed with the bone structure of Audrey Hepburn and the metabolism of a crack addict.
That was probably a good idea. The surgeon’s wrong, I’ve seen bad examples for myself - if you get a great facelift but your neck still looks like a turkey’s wattle, guess what people will be noticing?
Not to judge anybody’s choices, but I’ve always wondered, about getting the kind of surgery that changes your basic bone structure - like the moving-the-chin-around, or the nose job, or what have you - don’t you, er, look like a different person? Dosen’t it bug you? I’d like to look like a better looking me, sure, and I can see when I get older getting all that tightened up, and I can understand maybe why people might get their breasts worked on… but isn’t it strange to change the basic way your face looks? Ever pass a mirror and think it’s somebody else?
Honestly, I thought the interesting thing about these extreme makeover shows is that while they might change your brows and your lips and your nose and all, the thing I can really tell the difference in making people look better and younger is when they fix their teeth. I’m sure veneers are a bit more cost-effective, too.
Well, I look different in the fact I have a profile now, but I look BETTER. You have to see someone with a severely receded chin to know how odd it looks. I don’t mind looking different in order to look normal.
It did take me several months looking in the mirror to realize that pretty smile was mine. Even now, sometimes I’ll be sitting at the red light - I’ll drop down the vanity mirror and smile at myself and be amazed at how nice the smile looks.
I also had to change the way I smiled - when I had the huge overbite/overjet, I always smiled with the bottom lip carefully covering the bottom of the top teeth (to hide the weird lower jaw). I had to learn to smile naturally 
The Garden Guild, of which I’m vestry representative, worked in the church yard a few weeks ago doing clean up, planting, trimming, etc etc etc. One of the parishoners was there an took some pictures, which ended up on the bulletin board of the parish house yesterday. I walked in, saw that in profile I know look like a cross between a chipmunk and my grea aunt Edna (being a 40 year old man, this is NOT a good thing).
I’ve already made the call to the doctor.
I’m so glad you’re happy with the results, Glory. Do you think it would be different if it were more than one feature that you were unhappy with? If you’d, say, also gotten your nose and eyes done, do you think that would be strange to you? I guess if you were always unhappy with your chin you’d have had a firm idea in your head of “me after surgery”, like people with big noses might imagine the “little nosed” them?
Eve you sound really comfortable with yourself. Just because plastic surgery would make you look better is this a risk you want to take and something you can afford (they do finance)? If so, then go for it. BTW, $20,000 sounds high…
FWIW I’m in Dallas second only to LA/ Beverly Hills in the plastic surgery arena. It’s hard not to want to look like all thoseHighland Park (upscale neighborhood) MILFS. So far, I’ve limited my plastic surgery to a bit of Restylane in the upper lip which has me pleased as punch, but there’s some little things I’d like done that I’ve decided just aren’t worth the risk right now.
Well obviously they don’t like wha they see in the mirror, so they’ll have little problems with changes in that department. People have a tendency to miss only what they like, I think.
One thing that makes people look a lot more attractive imho, is a little bit of self-confidence, independent thought, and pleasure in life. Being in love helps too. Doing something that makes you feel better is the best make-over. Dealing with your problems in life is the best make-over. Think of it - it doesn’t matter how good or bad someone looks, a model has more stress over her looks than anyone else.
cynical mode on
Of course I’m one of those rare people who actually care more about content than cover, but I reckon that if people have given up on improving their inner-side, the outside may be the last hurrah. :rolleyes: 
cynical mode off
A pencil’s one thing. How about if you fail the box of 64 Crayola crayons test?
Nah, I’ll never really get it done. It’s just something I think of when I get a sudden load of myself in a side-view mirror or see a snapshot . . . I’m going to MoMA on the 28th to see the premiere of a documentary I’m interviewed in, and they shot me in XXXTREME CLOSE-UP. It’s enough to give Japanese schoolchildren seizures.