I'm a home owner! A very scared home owner

I completed on my house last Thursday yaaaaay! So this weekend and beginning of this week has been mainly sorting and moving stuff in to my new house. I'm getting my carpets fitted tomorrow and a load of Ikea furniture delivered on Friday, might have to throw a flat pack party this weekend!

Me outside my new house!

Now as much happiness and excitement this house brings me, it has also sparked a rather large panic within me. Not because I'm a real life adult now with actual responsibilities and bills I have to pay, but because surgery is soon (ish, I'm scheduled for 22nd Oct but no official letter yet) and this is the house I will be recovering in.

A lot of people who's blogs I follow have had surgery recently and it has been great to watch and hear about each individuals recovery process but I am just so scared. I was sat reading some recent updates on my lunch and almost burst in to tears, I'm absolutely petrified. I guess having the house to focus on has sort of made me push all of the jaw surgery stuff to the back of my mind, but now my house is mine and I'm almost finished with tidying up the loose ends it has just come flooding to the front and I don't know what to do.

I know that this is the right decision and I will be better off, physically, emotionally and mentally after, but I just cant seem to control this terror that I'm feeling at the minute. It starts in my belly and rises up to my chest then lodges at the back of my throat and threatens to burst out through my eyes in a huge flood of tears. I feel scared about everything, the operation, the drips, the swelling, the medication, the results, the swelling, bruising, nausea, bordem, recovering, missing work, my MBA, catching up with work, not eating, eating again, chewing... the list goes on.

I feel terrible, whenever I express my worry to people the standard response is "Don't worry, it will be worth it after, you'll feel better then..." etc etc and it really winds me up! yes, it will be worth it, I know that it will be, I have that bit solid in my brain, understood 100% or I wouldn't be where I am today, but that doesn't help me now. I get so annoyed with that response, but what else can people say?! I don't know what I want them to say, they can't say anything to make me feel better really.

It isn't up to everyone else to make me feel better, It's up to me, to get my shit together and not be so stupid and so panic ridden. I'll get there, I'm probably just a bit tired and drained from the move and all that stress and this has just gotten on top of me. My sad cat face will be gone soon enough!

I'm back!

Few! I'm back and everything is fine!

Had some "suspicious activity" on my Google email and Google was very kind and kept my blog nice and safe away from the nasty activity!

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the royal baby celebrations!

Much bracey love x

Late Tooth Update!

Well it's a bit late but a couple weeks ago, I had a really wobbly and sore tooth it was my first pre molar on my left side, top set of teeth. The canine on my top left is still a baby tooth, so it's not braced it had  a spring over it, now just a wire.

So after sort of playing with it all day with my tongue, asking my colleagues at work "does this look normal?" (wiggles tooth) and obsessively looking in the mirror and being horrified by how much it moved - up and down in the socket forward and back, I was convinced the only thing holding it in was the fact that it was braced and wired to my other teeth.

So really cleverly I finally decided that it wasnt normal to have a tooth that moved that much. and at 4pm on a Friday to phone the Max fac unit up at the hospital and try to see my orthodontist, not surprisingly at 4pm on a friday afternoon there wasn't an orthodontist available. I did speak to a lovely dental nurse who told me to go and see a dentist straight away, she had me booked in to see Mr O Monday afternoon.

I got to see my dentist Saturday morning. He had a poke and a wiggle of the sore tooth, then asked me if I wanted to keep my baby canine next to it or have it removed during surgery?   "yesssh a van de kep itch!!!" was the panic stricken, fingers in my mouth answer i gave him. His response was a very nonchalant "oh, ok then" My wobbly tooth was fine, no reason to remove it, just had to see my Ortho to sort my wires out.

I spent the weekend worrying about loosing my little baby canine, then went to see Mr O on Monday and he said that it was loose because of the way my bite was. Every time I bit down or closed my mouth my bottom teeth were pushing that top tooth causing it to move all the time and stabilise in it's socket. So he put a kink in the wire either side of the tooth to lift that tooth out of the way. He said it will hurt for a few days but it should help it settle and stop it catching on my bottom teeth, then once I've had my surgery he will pull that tooth back down and it should fit nicer once my jaws are realigned.

I also had a power chain fitted! My first piece of additional hardware! the power chain is to close a gap in my bottom front teeth, it hasn't hurt too much at all, it is closing that gap but also opening up a bigger gap on the other side, but I guess the power chain will move along a bit at my next appointment. I was really quite lucky, because I was meant to have an 11 week wait in between appointments, but with my wobbly tooth I ended up getting a sneaky appointment in the middle of it! Yaaaay!

My wobbly tooth has moved up and out the way, the pain from that tooth moving was incredible! Worse tooth pain yet, reduced me to liquid/soft food again for a week but I survived it and now I don't have a wobbly tooth! I have a 4 week wait to my next appointment, I'm hoping to get a bit more a firmed up date for surgery, last time it was 22nd of October, but I was told that could change. I will just have to wait and see, hopefully I will get something in writing, so I can start planning!

Post Birthday and Face Pictures

Well I had a brilliant Birthday! Thank you for all the Birthday well wishes. Ok I did have to go to work but it flew by really, then I went out for a lovely meal in the evening and ate so much food and Birthday cake and drank so much vodka and wine it was marvellous! I was paying for the alcohol the next day and my lovely high waisted trousers I have on for work today are currently paying the price for the massive amounts of food I have consumed and all that cake! (I had 4 Birthday cakes!) But going to try and swim it all off tonight!

So first of all here are some quick updated pictures of me and my face.

My underbite in all it's glory! I still think I have ages to go with my teeth, there are a lot of gaps still and my mid line is way off, maybe that's the way my jaw is and they will fix that I don't know, but when I look at my teeth I don't think yeah these are going to give me a lovely smile after surgery. I just look at them and think, you're all the wrong way round and not pretty enough yet.

I am dated for Mid/late October so I have got a while to wait and they are still all moving around and causing me grief on a regular basis, so I'm sure it will be fine. I'm not an Orthodontist so I'm sure whatever Mr O is doing he is doing it right!

On that note my jaw ache has been horrible recently, my extra strength pain killers didn't work yesterday, but I'm sure me whittling and stressing about my jaw ache not going away quick enough didn't help matters, it made it worse I'm sure! My jaw has also been juddering a lot lately, when talking, laughing or yawning it happens. So when my mouth is open then I go to close it, it judders then. Like its slipped out of place a bit and is finding its way back to where it needs to go but it's old and has a walking stick and is a bit blind and it doesn't know where it's going exactly.

Only happens on my right hand side joint, the first time it happened was in a meeting my my work colleague and my boss, they both saw it move and then my terrified expression and un-willingness to open my mouth again and remove my hand from my jaw just in case it fell off. It didn't, but it was painful and embarrassing really, but I will mention it to Mr O and my next appointment in August (that's ages away!!!!).

I met up with the brace girls last night, 2 of them are post surgery so was brilliant being able to see them. They were both so different! I will write a post about this later, it will be a long one! It really affected me, scared me a lot actually, but I will type it all up and get all these worries out!

Hope everyone has a good day!
Much Love x

Last Birthday with this face!

It is my Birthday today!!! Yaaaay, I love Birthdays! I'm the grand age of 25 and now that I'm a proper adult, I'm working on my Birthday! Boooooo to that, but I guess I couldn't keep taking my Birthday off as holiday for ever, I have responsibilities now at work so I had to come in.

So I had a little pre Birthday celebration with my friend on Saturday and she came over for dinner and drink and we were talking about my up coming surgery and what it will mean and what I'm worried about and what I'm looking forward to etc and then we were talking about my Birthday and she said

"OMG, this will be your last Birthday with this face!"

She was right, It bloody well will be! Ok, I know I'm not exactly getting a face transplant and I'm sure I will still look like me after surgery, but there will be some dramatic changes and my face will not look like it does now at my next Birthday!

What a weird and scary thought! The more I think about it, the more it freaks me out a bit, this time next year I will look rather different, I will (hopefully) be happier, I wont have as much jaw ache, I'll be able to eat a sandwich without a filling face slap (filling face slap definition here), I will have nice straight teeth, I (hopefully) wont get any more nasty comments about my face and I can explore different hairstyles and glasses that wouldn't of suited my current face shape! It's crazy to think how different my life will be in a years time, and how much more improved it will be.

I'm excited for it! I always look forward to Birthdays, it's a chance to celebrate the year of your life just gone and all of your achievements and highs and the lows that you have triumphed over. Birthdays also give you a chance to look forward, to plan ahead, make new goals and develop new aspirations for the year ahead and I know that in my future 25th year on this wonderful earth that one thing will change for the better and that my life will improve no end.

So tonight I will raise a glass with my family and loved ones to toast my year just gone and say Happy last Birthday to this wonderful face of mine and toast to my future face and this brilliant year ahead that is awaiting me!

Happy Last Birthday Face!

Birthday Dress for Work

My Chocolate and Peanut Butter Birthday Cake (made all by myself!)