In the summer of 1986, while attending church camp with my parents, I took a nasty fall - face-first - into a table. I can still remember that fall vividly, and the swelling and bruising that followed.
I was immediately taken to the nearest town for x-rays, where an oral surgeon determined then that nothing was broken. I spent the next couple of days with ice packs and eventually got back to normal life.
The next summer, while on a family vacation, my mom kept asking me to smile. I remember thinking it was weird. It wasn't like she was taking pictures or something - she just wanted me to smile at these random moments. After she and dad began whispering after one such request, I knew something was up.
Upon returning home, we first visited our normal doctor. He sent us on to the dentist, who sent us on to an oral surgeon. It was at the surgeon's office that the memory of the fall from the year before came back. Dr. Brennan was certain I had suffered a major blow to the chin that had caused the left side to quit growing. The face-plant into the table was the only explanation. At that point, the x-rays that were taken a year before were hunted down, and the debate of "it did break" or "it didn't break" began. Ultimately, it was believed, at that time, that the jaw had broken during the fall and that it had grown back incorrectly. I was referred on to the orthodontist.
Thus began monthly trips to the orthodontist. I endured years of appliances, bands, wires, retainers, and the like. I spent three years in braces. I had nice, straight teeth, but orthodontia couldn't fix the bone structure. Surgery to fix the skeletal structure was discussed, but I had a pretty irrational fear of surgery. I had had four eye surgeries by the age of eight and had been put under to have my wisdom teeth removed. I hated surgery. I always got very sick from the anesthetic and had horrible nightmares while under. I rationalized that some less-than-perfectly-straight bones weren't really that big of a deal. I was getting ready to go to college, and a recovery period just didn't work for my schedule. Surgery just never happened.
At this point, some of you might believe that I should have just taken care of this years ago, but I honestly didn't care about the cosmetic aspects. I wasn't in pain, I could eat whatever I wanted, I had perfectly straight teeth, and I just made myself too busy to even care about my face. I couldn't see into the future.
The pain started in 2011. I had a swollen lump in front of my right ear, and I would wake up each morning really hurting. I tried a mouth guard at night, but that only made things worse. The dots didn't connect immediately because the right side is the healthy side. I always assumed that if I had a problem it would happen on the left. Not so.
I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Bowman in January of 2012. Within minutes of meeting me and viewing only one panoramic x-ray, Dr. Bowman felt confident that I had never broken a bone. After a 3D CT Scan, it was confirmed that my jaw was never actually broken. The root of the problem was an underdeveloped left joint. On the right, I have a healthy joint, but on the left is a teeny tiny joint and socket. Dr. Bowman explained that there is an artery near the ear that can be pinched off in utero shutting off the blood supply to the surrounding area, resulting in improper development. He believes this is what happened to my left joint. The Great Fall just happened to come right before I had a growth spurt, and it was during that year that my right, healthy joint really outgrew the left side, making the misalignment obvious. Associating the problem with the fall was natural given the timing, but it now appears that the two issues were never related. The misalignment has taken its toll over the years. I have developed early stages of arthritis in the healthy right joint as a result, so I will receive a prosthetic joint on the left to fix alignment issues and decrease the stress on the right.
Hindsight is, indeed, 20/20. Looking back at childhood photos - photos taken before The Great Fall - the alignment issues can be recognized, but only with the insight of knowing what I should be looking for. I don't really believe knowing earlier would have changed anything in terms of my treatment. Technological advancements have made it possible to diagnose and treat this issue properly in the present. The prosthetic I am receiving didn't exist in the 90s, and I cannot remember my joints ever being discussed in my childhood, only skeletal structure. I feel pretty confident that even if I had undergone surgery earlier, I would still be dealing with this joint issue today.
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