pre-surgery anxiety

It's the day after Christmas and now that the festivities are taking a reprieve, my anxiety is filling up the void. So many thoughts and concerns before surgery. The swelling, the pain, the outcome!

I'm concerned about the loss of self in this whole process. I've spent so many years being unhappy with my profile and my weak chin... but now, I'm wondering how much my face will change. Will that be a loss of identity? What if I don't like my new face and I want the old one back? Have any of you gone through any of that? Did you think about that before the surgery? Why did you have the surgery in the first place? Anyway, I'm rambling but I'm going to let myself.

So, on I go... this is such a big deal! I'm having a saw to my facial bones! What am I thinking! My brain likes to do things the 'right' way... 'no CPAP for me, fix me, make me the way I was supposed to be before the 1970's ortho pulled teeth and moved my jaw back so far!' But, I didn't even consider what this would be like psychologically. I didn't think it might change my face dramatically! I only thought about my profile...

I don't really plan on changing my mind at this point, I always hope for the best and then deal with the disappointment afterwards. But, knowing me, I can really struggle for a while. I can picture things being different, how I am going to get what I want, etc. And, that tenacity and determination has gotten me a lot of what I want in life. However, it has also caused a lot of anxiety and mental struggle. I don't want to go through that after surgery. I want to accept my new appearance and move on.

Does everyone struggle with their new face, or is it only the extreme changes? Does everyone even see changes in their face or is there also disappointment in not enough change?

My OS was glad I was thinking about all of this but probably doesn't know how 'anal' I can be in my thoughts! It's actually a good and different thing for me to be dealing with this before the fact. Usually, I just put my head in the sand and hope for a miraculous outcome, and then deal with the disappointment later! I'm glad I'm looking at it now.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

breaking the picture rules...

Okay, I don't really have any profile shots that were taken for the purpose of before and afters. Here are a couple of pictures of my unbalanced face and my gummy mouth. I'll work on adding more suitable 'before' pictures later.



Here's the gummy mouth picture, I think I was making a face at my husband!

rules for taking my picture

There are several rules I have for having my picture taken...
They are:
1) no profile shots
2) no pictures without me knowing
3) I must be smiling
4) a picture from the back is okay as long as my face is not showing
The reason for the rules is obvious (at least to me). I like to look good in pictures. As an adolescent I took really bad pictures and hated it, so I worked hard to become photogenic. Anyway, that's why, I can't stand to see pictures of myself looking bad. For the purpose of this blog, I will ease up on my rules, though. I'm going to boldly show some pictures that I hate, but they're the way I see myself! I'm usually smiling, which is the least expensive way to improve your looks... and I'm all about that!

This is taken with my youngest daughter in New York City this summer. She looks a lot like me, and she thinks we're both beautiful. She even says, she likes it when we're out together because then boys will see what she's going to look like when she's 47!