Before Photos and Recovery Worries

It's now less than 3 weeks till my surgery and the closer it gets, the more antsy I'm becoming. I find myself at silly hours in the morning, searching for jaw surgery blogs and YouTube channels to make sure I'm super-duper prepared for what's waiting for me.

As this past month since getting my date has gone so fast, I don't really know how to grasp the fact that in 19 days, I will have a different face. Even just typing it now and telling my friends about it in person, the meaning of those words really haven't sunk in.

Obviously I'm absolutely bricking it, although it's not the surgery itself that scares me. After having two operations previous to this one, I like to think of myself as quite the surgery connoisseur by now... I've heard a lot of horror stories about the first four days after the surgery. The not eating, not sleeping and not talking is only a handful of the things that worry me about the recovery process.

I guess my worries are quite trivial. For example, I find myself wondering how I'll be able to sneeze, cough and yawn... The pain of swallowing and breathing also plays on my mind a lot. Although the bruising and swelling is different for everyone, I worry that I will still look battered and bruised for my University Graduation in July...

Nevertheless, after seeing everyone's results, I really believe that it'll do for me what it seems to have done for other people.

All this being said, I realise that I am yet to share any photos of my bite as it stands before the surgery. It was quite challenging finding photos where my underbite is visible as after so long, I've managed to find various angles where I can disguise or hide it.

So here is a selection of random photos and specific bite photos to give you more of an idea of what I'm aiming to get rid of. In nearly all of these, you can see how my underbite not only impacts my smile, but my side profile, cheek bones, lips and nose...

**Please excuse the state of my skin here. I'm having a very bad face day...**

And here's some random ones where I haven't really tried to hide it...

Although there's an attempt to minimise my jaw in this photo, it's still really visible and you can see how I can't seem to smile without it showing.

This is the only photo of me I've ever found with a side profile. I was clearly caught off guard...

This isn't so much about my underbite, but more my cross-bite. Although it's a pretty minimal problem in my bite, it hugely alters the way my chin and lips look most of the time.

Oddly, clicking Publish on this is a lot harder than I anticipated. It's different to posting photos to Facebook or Snapchat. Here I'm drawing attention to the thing that I try at most times to disguise or hide completely. I suppose it's just further proof that my surgery is really what I need to do to regain a degree of self-confidence...