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| I found this picture of me on Facebook and asked for it to be removed because I hate how my chin looks. |
I blame a fall in Kindergarten (a pretty bad one, broke the bone that holds your top teeth together, shoved my jaw backward, flattened my front teeth to the top of my mouth...all requiring surgery) and my mom says it's genetics...either way, I grew up have a very weak, almost non-existent chin. When all my girlfriends complained about wanting new boobs, I could never relate to that. I've got more than my fair share, but how I dreamed about having a chin. I'm sure it seems like a very petty thing to wish for, and I agree it is, but we all have that one thing about ourselves we'd like to change...and this was mine. At seventeen I paid for my own braces. That was the first time I saw what I could look like had my chin been fixed. The orthodontist showed what my profile would look like if he had his way...which was breaking my jaw to realign them and then straightening my teeth. Although my parents weren't paying (another vanity issue of wanting/needing braces), my mom quickly told him "no way" after she found out how much it would cost. Instead I had top teeth removed (which changed the shape of my face and made the lower fourth even more weak) and pulled them all back to match my bottom teeth.
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| Me hiding my chin in pictures. |
My mom thought I was vain when I mentioned to her that I might get a chin implant. After her reaction I told no one except the hubby. My hubby went with me to the pre-op appointments and couldn't have been more supportive. I had to take a week off work for it (luckily it snowed a lot and I didn't have to miss more than four days). The surgery placed a medium sized implant in my chin and my doctor also did liposuction to my chin and tied back muscles. It would have been great had the surgery went great the first time.
It was an very painful experience. I knew it would hurt, but I completely underestimated how badly. My doctor had accidentally burned through my skin with his cauterizer and a muscles was stuck under the implant. I told him several times in post-operative appointments that things were just not right and he agreed, but we decided to see how my body dealt with it rather than going through surgery again. Of course, three months after the surgery was my wedding date. I thought I'd have plenty of time to heal and the burn mark was still very apparent, but I did have a chin. :)
In the weeks that passed after the surgery, I looked like a freak!!! This is what my students saw when I got back to work:
That's after ten days of healing. The burn on the left is from the inside of my neck all the way through the outside. The rest is crazy bruising and marks from the liposuction. The swelling on my right side is what always concerned me...and why I had to have surgery again.
But, I HAD A CHIN. I couldn't raise my head all the way because of the muscle issue, it was swollen for a long time and I had no feeling in the lower quarter of my face, but I had a chin!!!
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| This is the first "non posed" picture I had seen of myself post-surgery. |
After a year, things still were not great on my right side. My doctor said a muscle had twisted and he would need to go back in and smooth it out. I was expecting similar, painful, results as the previous surgery so I took a week off work, but it wasn't bad AT ALL. I had surgery on a Thursday and called my sub on Friday telling her I'd be back on Monday. I hate missing work and I was well enough to teach, as long as I took some Tylenol midway through the day.
Three years post the first surgery, I'm still not 100% happy with my results, but the scar on my neck has faded, the one from the implant incision is still pretty bold, but it's better than the alternative, which was no chin. I still see profile pictures of myself now and cringe because I don't have a prominent chin, but if I wasn't complaining about that, I'd find something else to complain about. The right side still isn't "right", but I'm living with it. It's only times when I see pictures like the one below that I feel the vanity creeping back up because I paid for perfection, but then I realize, I have to accept that nothing is perfect.
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| Ok, maybe it's not just the chin. This is a bad picture of me in general. |
My first husband could never understand why I hated my chin so much and agreed with my mom that I was vain to complain about it. And, when you consider many people are dying from terrible diseases, yes, it is definitely vain of me to worry about my chin. But, I had worked myself into a complex and to some degree I still drag it with me.
I still smile at every camera I see, I still feel like my chin is weak, but in the end, none of that matters. I'm happy, healthy, my kids are healthy, and life is good. :)
~Beth
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