< Treatment Timeline I am no stranger to living with a false tooth – I got my first one when I was nine years old. Due to the way my palate grew, when it was repaired, the middle tooth did not grow (since there wasn’t any gum there for one to grow out from). Over the years I’ve had false teeth attached to braces, stuck on to neighbouring teeth and incorporated as part of retainers. Once my reconstructive surgery was finished in September 2017, I had my final, permanent false

< Treatment Timeline I had never been especially self-conscious about my lip, because I had always been preoccupied with my nose, and once I’d had my septorhinoplasty (nose surgery), my self-confidence shot through the roof. I couldn’t believe (and sometimes still can’t believe) how much of a difference it made to the way I felt about myself. Although I wasn’t so worried about my lip, I became concerned that I could start to become self-conscious of it in the future, since it

< Treatment Timeline After my first round of jaw surgery, my treatment plan became a little unusual… I had my jaw operation in December 2015. After surgery, my post-op recovery was going well…until a morning in February when I woke up with my teeth the wrong way round. Once I’d woken up properly, my teeth moved back to their new, ‘proper’ position with the bottom jaw/teeth behind the top jaw/teeth. In the weeks leading up to this unexpected movement, I had noticed that, when

< Treatment Timeline After my second jaw surgery, I had more intensive post-op care to make sure the jaw was healing properly. I went back to my hospital weekly for the first month and then fortnightly to check everything was going to plan. At first I was concerned that my teeth were moving back since I could feel them grinding together, and eventually the bottom teeth were in front of the top again. To sort this I wore elastics to gradually ease in the new bite and correct i

< Treatment Timeline I want to firstly highlight that this is NOT an expected part of cleft lip and palate treatment. I had a second round of jaw surgery in September 2016 after my first round didn’t heal properly. This is extremely rare. Okay…so when my first lot of jaw surgery healed, the point where the jaw was broken to be moved into a new position healed with a fibrous union rather than a bony one. This meant that where bone should have grown, tissue grew instead. This c

< Treatment Timeline In summer 2015, I was expecting to have my jaw surgery, but, unfortunately, I was told there were a few obstacles in my way that meant I would have to wait until December. One of those hurdles was my wisdom teeth. It’s not unusual for wisdom teeth to be taken out, however this usually happens when they have started to become a problem for someone. Mine on the other hand were flagged on an x-ray. They were still in the gum, but the senior orthodontic consu

< Treatment Timeline So although a lot of children and teenagers have braces at some point in their adolescence, cleft lip and palate patients are (in my opinion) the experts when it comes to braces. As a patient myself, I have worn braces in some form or another for over half my life. From when I lost my last baby tooth when I was nine to now at twenty years old. A brief timeline of my braces during my cleft treatment: A couple of ‘highlights’ from over a decade of wearing b

< Treatment Timeline Having a bone graft is an often-expected part of treatment for cleft lip and palate patients. I had mine when I was nine. As I grew, the initial repair wasn’t enough and a small gap had been created where the roof of my mouth had been stitched together. Before I had my bone graft I wore a wire brace to prepare my teeth for the surgery which gave the surgeons more manoeuvrability. They took a tiny bit of bone from my hip and put it into the small gap in th