Cheekbone Implant Surgery and Removal
Sexy title, no? This is an overview of the surgery I had as a teenager and the complications that arose 13 years later and the surgeries that resulted.
When I was about 17, I had my face broken. My jaw wasn’t growing right, and I had an under-bite. Part of the diagnosis was that the middle of my skull (cheekbones down to upper jaw) had not grown in proportion to the rest of my head. This gave me what I think of as a crescent moon shape face. This lack of growth in the middle of my face caused my jawbone to pull out of socket when I bit down because my teeth did not align properly. And that is bad, people. Bad.
So, this is what they did to fix it: First they put me in braces and messed around with my teeth, making gaps and such for the surgery. Then, some time later (I forget how long) I had general anesthesia surgery. A dental surgeon broke my bottom jaw and pulled it a wee bit back, and he broke off my four front teeth and pulled them a wee bit out.
If you look at the x-ray from last post, you can see that where the lower jaw was broken, there were brackets. I don’t know WTF about all the bolts on top except they helped fasten my top four front teeth back in my head. Also, the doc gave me some silicone implant cheekbones to mimic where that part of my face hadn’t grown. You can’t see the bolts for the cheekbones on the x-ray provided. Just throw like eight more bolts up there in your imagination. As it turned out, the only scar on the outside of my body that I had was where they drilled a small screw into my skull (between my eyebrows) to center my head while they did the work. The rest was all done from the inside. PS: They took that screw out too. But they took it out before I woke up from the first surgery.
I woke up after four hours of surgery, and for the first time since puberty hit, my front teeth were pushed out past my bottom teeth. That was a cool freaking feeling, let me tell you, to feel with my tongue that all my teeth were in a different place. Also? My jaw was wired shut. And it stayed wired shut for two months. God, my parents were so happy: Teenage girl struck mute. Two whole months of not having to listen to the constant squeals of adolescence. Or you know. Squeals of pain. The doc gave me what looked pretty much like a liter bottle full of liquid codeine, so I didn’t squeal in pain too much. Come to think of it, I don’t think I learned too much the second half of my senior year either.
And for full disclosure, my jaw was not actually wired with wire. It was tied together with this intricate design of rubber bands hooked onto braces. I couldn’t open my mouth and I wasn’t allowed to eat solid food for two months after the surgery. ‘nothing that can’t get through a tea-strainer’ was the rule. Getting nutrition was hardly worth it. I also wasn’t allowed to use a straw. Sipping up tablespoons of liquid codeine was totally worth it.
And then I had braces for fifteen months, with lots of appointments to wrangle my moved around teeth back into position.
And then after all of that torture and suckitude, I ended up being a very skinny, pretty, cheekbony college freshman who knew how to drink all her calories. Whoooo-hoooooo! I’d like to say I loved that first brace-free year, but its kind of one big giggly blur.
And that part of my life was pretty much done for thirteen years, except for this weird fear of dentist that developed immediately following the removal of my braces.
Until right after I had my second baby, and my right cheekbone started looking a little disfigured and swollen up. I ignored it for maybe five months because I had a refluxy baby and got no sleep and was a little depressed. Also, that cheekbone implant had always felt different, unlike the left one, which just felt like part of my body.
What I didn’t know was that when the surgeon screwed all those bolts into my cheekbone and upper jaw? He punctured through into my sinus cavity. So at some point, I got a sinus infection (or maybe it was any combination of the half dozen I’ve had in my adult life) and the infection oozed across the barrier of my bone via titanium screws and up into the sweet bosom of silicone implant. I also didn’t know that once bacteria gets on a silicone implant, you’re completely screwed. No blood flows to an implant, so it doesn’t matter how many antibiotics you take, the infection just sits in the soft goo of silicone and waits until it is safe to spread again.
So right around my 31st birthday, I called up my old dental surgeon, and I went in for him to take a look. He looked. He cursed outside my room, and I came to find out that the implants he had used on me thirteen years ago had been ‘cutting edge technology’ at the time, and since then had a terrific FAIL rating for this type of thing. Mostly, he was surprised I had lasted 13 years before getting a problem. Then he told me he would book me for removal surgery in ten days, but that the implant was rejecting and it might ‘come through [my] skin’ because he had seen that happen once before. And if that did happen in the next ten days, I needed to go to the E.R.
The next ten days were a shithole of anxious fun, let me tell you.
That first surgery, a new guy, my old doc’s partner, took my cheekbone implants out. Then I was on antibiotics for four months and no one could figure out why my sinus infection would not go away.
Exploratory surgery was planned, and at my last appointment, the doctor took more x-rays and discovered I had a cyst on my bone. Apparently, more infection had burrowed through my skull along the path that a titanium bolt had left. This infection had gotten to the front of my bone and made a little safe haven where it was protected from blood flow. So I would take antibiotics, and same as the silicone implants, the infection would just wiggle back along a screw to someplace it was protected.
My second surgery they took out all the top screws on my right hand side. And then they cut a chunk of my skull out to get the cyst. I wish I had a good x-ray to show of that, but I was lucky to investigative reportively steal the one I am showing you now. with my artistic rendition in red where things were drilled out. The big red block being where they took the chunk of skull.
Anyway, the doctor assured me after he cut out my bone that there was absolutely nothing left to get infected on my right side, praise jeebus! And please Anne, for the love of malpractice fees, never darken his doorway again.
But the good doctor left all the bolts on the left hand side. So now every time I get a sinus infection, I get to worry if I am developing some kind of cyst on the left hand side.
I think this covers everything, but to answer the specific questions left in comments:
The New Girl asks:
Huh. Why all those screws?
Just for fun, I guess.
Shorty and All Adither pointed out I appear to have a shitload of teeth:
I do. But also, the x-ray was taken pivoting around my head, to show all my teeth clearly for the picture. I do not look like a rattlesnake jaw in real life.
Stimey asked:
Do you still have the screws? Where do you keep them?
I kept the screws and the implants. There are pictures back there in archives somewhere. I was going to raffle them off, but I was a little concerned about sending medical waste through the mail. Especially with scraps of my bone tissue imbedded in them. My husband keeps them all in a box in his office. He is very possessive that way – I think he was even a little jealous the doctor got to be inside me in a place my husband will never get to go. I keep telling him that one day he’ll be able to fondle my stripped skull bones, but only until the police get there. This does not amuse my husband. I don’t know why.
