< Smile Train Timeline I’ve made many incredible memories whilst working for Smile Train, but the one which tops them all is the day I visited our partner hospital in Laos. I was on holiday with my brother and his girlfriend, enjoying elephant adventures, zip-lining through jungles and swimming in waterfalls. Whilst there were plenty of once-in-a-lifetime experiences, this was the highlight of the whole trip. The South East Asia Smile Train Programme Co-ordinator had arranged

< Smile Train Timeline As my internship was coming to a close, my manager was due to go on maternity leave. I was extremely grateful when Smile Train offered me the chance to stay on by covering her role full-time as Smile Train's Corporate Fundraising Assistant. The job means I look after our current corporate partners and create partnerships with new companies. Each partnership focuses on creating a win-win situation and focuses on raising funds and awareness for Smile Trai

< Smile Train Timeline I started my internship with Smile Train by learning about the team's various fundraising areas. I worked in Community and Events to start with by putting together some research for what is now the Smile Impact Society – an initiative aimed at university students to fundraise for Smile Train whilst learning professional skills along the way. I helped with one of our largest events, the Smile Train Christmas Carol Concert, by sourcing numerous raffle pri

< Smile Train Timeline Before starting my internship, I was invited to Smile Train UK’s Summer Celebration, which just happened to be at the House of Lords. It was an amazing evening that celebrated many milestones for Smile Train in 2018 such as reaching 500,000 smiles in India. I also got to meet the rest of the UK team and Baroness Kay Andrews who was hosting the event. We heard about many of Smile Train's achievements, including personal stories from a young girl in India

< Smile Train Timeline After meeting Smile Train UK’s Fundraising Director, Ian, in London in March 2018, I happened to be going to New York that Easter for a family holiday. Ian spoke with the New York office and they arranged for me to go in for a whole day and meet some of the NYC team. They were so friendly and welcoming, each generously giving up their time to explain their work. I was able to learn about how they develop their programmes, and how Smile Train works with

< Smile Train Timeline I promote this website mainly through social media, especially Instagram. This was where I first noticed Susannah Schaefer, CEO of the global cleft charity Smile Train ‘liking’ my posts. The fact she had even noticed my little website and account was absolutely gob-smacking! It was then, late on a December evening, trudging through university coursework that I decided to reach out and send her a direct message. I sent it (quite honestly) because I was t

< 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