Will I be covered/Consultation

Once I decided that I wanted to do this, my next question was, will my insurance cover this? I have Kaiser Permanente and I wasn't sure on how that all worked. I did research and what I found was that they do cover Orthagnathic Surgery, however, there are specific qualifications like; measurements, and severity. When I saw that, I got worried because like I said on my first post, my under bite is not severe. The day of my consultation I was a bit nervous about what he would think. My hope was that I would only need to get my lower jaw corrected. I had seen a lot of  double jaw surgeries and not a lot of experiences where they just move the lower jaw back. I was thinking in my case I would just need the lower jaw done. I thought hey, if it's just the lower jaw it won't be that bad! Well my bubble of self diagnoses was popped. Dr. Bell told me that he wants to move the lower jaw back, upper jaw forward and tilted down a bit so that my top teeth would show more. He gave me an example of those models who have that beautiful resting face, pouty lips and just a bit of teeth showing. It made me laugh a bit, but then I suddenly got excited. Hey who wouldn't wanna have that look? One thing I was worried about was my nose! I've read so many stories of peoples noses getting wider. Let me just say, I have a wide nose, and I expressed this to him, he said its possible, and that the tip of my nose may point up a bit more. I mean it sucks, but good thing I know how to contour! Last thing he said that I wasn't expecting was that I would also need to get my palate expanded! (Saay Whaaaa?!) his words were that if it doesn't have to be expanded more than 4mm then he can do it while im getting my jaw surgery. See, now this would be an ideal situation. I DO NOT... want to go through two separate surgeries. First beacause I don't wanna know the pain of it yet, cause I don't want to get scared out of having the major surgery, and second reason is because I cant be taking off so much work. Granted, I get vacation and sick leave, but that needs to be saved up for the major surgery. My next question was......ummm will this be covered by my insurance? He said it would be, and I kept asking for reassurance because I knew that there were guidelines. He told me, "don't worry, I tell them if it's needed or not." He gave me a bunch of print outs to read, and also told me that I would need to make an appointment with one of the orthodontists he usually works with. One was 30 minutes away from where I lived, so naturally I went with that one. I would have to get a consultation with the orthodontist next and get my records done. That was it, I felt really good with Dr. Bell, he knows his stuff, and very confident in what he does.

Winner Winner

I decided that I would set up a consultation with a surgeon and see what they thought. That brought on my next task....... researching highly rated surgeons within Kaiser Permanente. I looked at so many, I even typed their names in Google to see if there were any stories on them that might make me a little scared of having them next to my face with a scalpel. I looked at years of experience and the amount of surgeries they do a year. I came across Dr.Bell with Kaiser, he has 19 years of experience and does about 120 of these procedures a year. I also did a Google search on him and found a whole page of reviews from his patients(the other surgeons didn't have this). They all said such great things about him, like his bedside manners, accessibility, they didn't have pain, and healed well. After reading that, I called and made an appointment with him.

Well this is new.

I'm going to start by saying, I do not have a severe case. I have an under bite, but it's minor compared to the cases I've seen through all of my research. Most people can't tell, this is because I'm constantly masking it by literally pulling my bottom jaw back as far as I can. It's painful when I do it for too long. I mainly do it for pictures. For the most part my teeth are straight, besides some that are going there own way, and I also have two pencil teeth up top (hate those little guys).  About two months ago I started noticing that I'm really not happy with my teeth, or my bite. I've always had an under bite, it never bothered me much, but most recently my top and bottom teeth are edge to edge, which is causing a lot of sensitivity to a couple of the bottom teeth. With that said, my thought was, ok, I have a good job with great benefits, a boyfriend who loves me and wouldn't mind the braces, and I'm a grown woman who isn't embarrassed of the little things anymore. A couple days later I was having my consultation. Thinking this would be an easy fix, I told the ortho that I wanted straight teeth and my bite corrected. He looked at the X-rays and said "well we can get your teeth straight, but we can't correct your bite, in fact, your bite will get worse." My thoughts.....(Ummm I'm sorry...What?!) definitely NOT the answer I was looking for. He explained that the only way to fix my under bite was to get jaw surgery. My thoughts...(Ha! yeeeaah not gonna happen) Then he went on to say that my issue is strictly skeletal and the braces can not perform that kind of movement. I was so sad, hope was lost, the surgery was just not something I would ever consider. I asked, can't you put rubber bands on my teeth to pull the jaw back ? He told me that would only work if I were like 10 years old. My jaw was already a full grown adult set in its ways, no chance of changing it, unless of course I got the surgery. I thought of this all day,and started researching the heck out of it. The correct medical term is Orthognathic Surgery, and seeing all of those swollen, bruised up faces scared the crap out of me. I have never had any surgery in my life and no broken bones, (knock on wood) so this was just such a crazy idea to me. Ok, so as I kept researching I was finding all of the success stories and how people were so happy they had gotten it done, and that they were so happy with their smiles. I wanted that, so, I decided at that point, I wanted to start the process.