And now, a serious post about me.
I've wanted to make this post for a while now. I never bring it up with people in casual conversation because... well, it just doesn't happen. But it is a strong part of my identity, and I think I just want to write about it.
If you have met me in person, chances are you noticed! If you have not, then maybe you've noticed something in those photos I post on my LJ. If this is totally new to you, it's all cool; I'm going to tell you all about it now.
I am talking, of course, about my cleft lip.
Where do I even begin. I think I'll start with the basics -- with what exactly a cleft lip is.
If you Google or Wiki cleft lip, you get a whole lot of medical talk and, I'll be frank here, some rather horrifying pictures of affected children. IN LAYMAN'S TERMS, a cleft lip or palate occurs when the face does not finish forming in the womb! There is either a split all the way down the palate, or a split solely through the lips -- although the front teeth may also be affected. It often extends into one nostril as well, like me; mine is on the left side of my face. This isn't like, a wound or anything! But it does have really serious consequences besides the obvious aesthetic problems. For example, I could barely drink milk as a baby because my cleft lip prevented me from being able to create suction. There are serious problems with teeth (I'll get to mine later). And the Internet tells me clefts also affect the inner ear, resulting in earaches, infections, and balance trouble.
I'm pretty lucky, though. My father had a cleft palate, and that was a first for his family. So I think my mom and dad were already mentally prepared to have a kid with a cleft; my dad says the first thing he did when I was born was stick his finger in my mouth to check how far my cleft went.
I had a lot of dental work to correct it, of course! The first surgery I can remember (but not my first surgery for this) is a bone transplant from my hip to my mouth. Okay, so I really just remember going into anesthesia and staying overnight in the hospital afterwards, but whatever. I got my first braces at age 3; they were removable, and I only had to wear them at night, kind of like metal retainers. I wore braces and retainers from then all the way to my senior year in high school, when I was... 17? Fourteen years in orthodontia, that's about 2/3 of my life so far!
I admit I've never been very sympathetic to people who had to deal with orthodontia for a year. Nor did I understand why people thought metal in your mouth was "cool" during elementary school. IT'S NOT COOL, IT'S PAINFUL AND ANNOYING AND I JUST WANT TO CHEW GUM ONCE IN MY LIFE!!
WARNING, beginning the graphic dental/surgery descriptions: Anyway, despite all that orthodontia, my mouth was still really fucked up! The tooth directly in line with the cleft (idk what it's called, it's the one between the left canine and the left front tooth) was turned 180° and there was no adult tooth behind it. I discovered in elementary school that I could bite holes with this tooth in paper, like a bizarre hole-puncher. But the dentist turned that tooth the right way around, and I couldn't do it anymore. :(
Basically, this tooth was the bane of my dental existence. I was too young to even think about having an implant, but pulling it out would have screwed over the alignment of the rest of my teeth. So I had a surgery to try and strengthen the gumline! The surgeon took part of my palate and transplanted it to the gum over that stupid tooth. If I lift my lip, you'd see it: it's really obviously... bulgier than the rest of my gumline. I didn't go fully under but I closed my eyes so I wouldn't, you know, see bits of my mouth being cut out ugh. But JESUS CHRIST THAT SURGERY HURT. I was given this weird chewing gum-like bandage to put over the wounds, but it fell off a lot. I swallowed orzo pasta a lot.
The second surgery was to try and keep my teeth from turning once I stopped wearing retainers. They did this by cutting whatever elastic mouth bits are in the triangle-shaped gum parts between your front teeth. I am not sure this really did anything in the long run.
Somewhere in there I also got my wisdom teeth removed (thankfully I only had bottom ones) and the sites got infected and I had to constantly swish with warm salt water on my visit to DisneyWorld, but that is not cleft-related. I don't think I'm missing any other surgeries.
The last surgery actually dealt that stupid tooth ONCE AND FOR ALL!1!! I had to do SOMETHING about it; it was dead weight and liable to fall out any moment anyway. The dentist gave me a choice: I could have an implant, I could have a bridge with no drilling, or I could have a bridge with minimal drilling. Implant was definitely out; I was so sick and tired of recovering from having my gums cut open. He persuaded me to get something called a "butterfly bridge" -- it's not as intense as an implant, but it's stronger than a normal bridge.
He had to pull out that baby tooth for this, but there was really no bleeding so, yeah, it was definitely time to do something. He shaved down the canine tooth next to it so he could put a cap on it. The bridge was attached to this cap and stretched to the leftmost front tooth where it was anchored. (I really hope I am explaining this right, otherwise I can draw it!) The fake tooth is attached to the bridge and fits in between the canine and front tooth, just like a normal adult tooth. Since it's not an implant, there's a small gap between it and my gum. I am always super careful to brush in between it, since the dentist told me that if I didn't, I was at serious risk for gum rot and that scared the shit out of me.
It's really nice, though. It took me almost a year to get over that mental hurdle that "THIS TOOTH WILL FALL OUT IF I BITE DOWN ON IT!!" since I'd been thinking that for most of my life! I always bit with the right side of my mouth, and chewed mostly on that side, too. But I started biting down on fruit and it didn't fall out, and that is awesome and I love being able to do that. Although I think I still use the right side of my mouth automatically, haha.
END SURGERY DESCRIPTIONS!
Crap, that got long. And that's only the technical side of the story.
Anyway, my cleft has always had major influence on how people perceived me and also how I perceived them, and how I perceive myself. Since I don't feel like structuring this properly, I'll just put down anecdotes.
In elementary school, I judged people by how fast they brought up my cleft when we met. If they asked almost instantly, "What's wrong with your face?" I struck them off the list of possible friends. If they didn't, I was friendlier to them. I don't remember if those people asked about my cleft later. It's possible they didn't; direct questions were actually pretty rare, now that I think of it.
If they did ask me why my lip was like that, my answer was usually, "Because otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand me." I was pretty cold about this.
There was one instance of serious teasing that I remember. It was first grade, I think, and this boy whose name I will never forget told me my face would split all the way down the middle. It made me cry, and I harbored a serious, unrelenting grudge against him all the way through high school. I still have that grudge against him, although we were rarely classmates and never talked.
I thought I'd gotten over that insta-grudge but NO, NO I HAD NOT! Junior year of high school my mom took me to a college guidance counselor. I was already pretty iffy after fifteen minutes; the counselor kept telling me I needed to take physics to be accepted into a college (despite my protests that I strongly dislike the sciences), it would look good even if I didn't get an A in the class and it wasn't AP, I should really try and get into that physics course, and oh, I should also buy the physics book just in case! If I read it over the summer I might be interested and join the class and she thought physics was really important because colleges think so!
(For the record, I did not take the physics course and I got into my first choice of college on early decision with a bonus scholarship so FUCK THAT SHIT, MAN.)
But then! Then she said something that instantly turned my doubtfulness into pure, unadulterated dislike.
"You're sitting with the right side of your face visible to me [i.e. the "undamged" side], is that because you're trying to hide your cleft?"
BAM! Snap decision! I am not going back to you. It's really hard to explain why that sort of question makes me hate a person. Maybe it was just so unprofessional. Maybe I just really, really dislike it when my physical (... "deformity" is too harsh a word) quirks are pointed out non sequiteur. But it was clear to me that I hadn't -- and still haven't, I think -- gotten over that habit of judging people based on whether they bring up my cleft or not.
I have never seriously considered plastic surgery to smooth out my lips and make them look more "normal." I tell myself I've spent 21 years becoming comfortable with the way I look, and I don't want to spend another 20 years getting comfortable with a new look.
I'm terrified of public speaking because I am really self-conscious about the way I sound. It started when I got a tape player that could record and play back, and my sister and I had fun being silly with it. I was shocked when I heard my voice play back, though. It was deeper and more... more nasal than it sounded in my head! It sounded like I had a cold! I thought it was the tape player's fault, but eventually I realized that my voice sounds different to other peoples' ears than it does in mine.
I sound like my nose is stuffed, like I'm sick or suffering from allergies on a daily basis. This is not true. I am constantly blowing my nose, which may seem like I'm sick or allergic but this is not true, either! I think it's a quirk of my physiology that gives me a runny nose almost all the time. I do have a passage that goes from where my upper gumline and top lip meet directly to my nose, and there may be other weird things about my back palate that I'm not aware of. I used to be the envy of my sister because I could make milk come out my nose and she couldn't. xD One of the reasons I don't drink soda is because I tried my aunt's Diet Pepsi as a child, but the carbonation went straight up that passageway into my nose. I am also leery of spicy foods, because goddamn is it uncomfortable getting spice up that way!
I'm still better off than my father, who sometimes gets rice or corn or fish bones (aaaaugh) up his nose because he has a hole in his palate.
I have never actually said this to anyone, but I resent the term "mouth breather" when used as an insult. Some of us are physically incapable of breathing through our noses! I chew with my mouth open because otherwise I'd pass out... although I've noticed that I try to keep it closed when eating with people not family.
On a related note, my biggest irrational fear is being kidnapped and gagged. It's supposed to only keep you quiet, but I am pretty sure I would slowly and uncomfortably suffocate instead.
I think I've talked about all the cleft-related things I really wanted to. This is an insanely long post, and if you made it all the way -- or most of the way -- through, I thank you very much for taking the time to read this. I hope you have learned something new (and interesting?) about me.
If you have met me in person, chances are you noticed! If you have not, then maybe you've noticed something in those photos I post on my LJ. If this is totally new to you, it's all cool; I'm going to tell you all about it now.
I am talking, of course, about my cleft lip.
Where do I even begin. I think I'll start with the basics -- with what exactly a cleft lip is.
If you Google or Wiki cleft lip, you get a whole lot of medical talk and, I'll be frank here, some rather horrifying pictures of affected children. IN LAYMAN'S TERMS, a cleft lip or palate occurs when the face does not finish forming in the womb! There is either a split all the way down the palate, or a split solely through the lips -- although the front teeth may also be affected. It often extends into one nostril as well, like me; mine is on the left side of my face. This isn't like, a wound or anything! But it does have really serious consequences besides the obvious aesthetic problems. For example, I could barely drink milk as a baby because my cleft lip prevented me from being able to create suction. There are serious problems with teeth (I'll get to mine later). And the Internet tells me clefts also affect the inner ear, resulting in earaches, infections, and balance trouble.
I'm pretty lucky, though. My father had a cleft palate, and that was a first for his family. So I think my mom and dad were already mentally prepared to have a kid with a cleft; my dad says the first thing he did when I was born was stick his finger in my mouth to check how far my cleft went.
I had a lot of dental work to correct it, of course! The first surgery I can remember (but not my first surgery for this) is a bone transplant from my hip to my mouth. Okay, so I really just remember going into anesthesia and staying overnight in the hospital afterwards, but whatever. I got my first braces at age 3; they were removable, and I only had to wear them at night, kind of like metal retainers. I wore braces and retainers from then all the way to my senior year in high school, when I was... 17? Fourteen years in orthodontia, that's about 2/3 of my life so far!
I admit I've never been very sympathetic to people who had to deal with orthodontia for a year. Nor did I understand why people thought metal in your mouth was "cool" during elementary school. IT'S NOT COOL, IT'S PAINFUL AND ANNOYING AND I JUST WANT TO CHEW GUM ONCE IN MY LIFE!!
WARNING, beginning the graphic dental/surgery descriptions: Anyway, despite all that orthodontia, my mouth was still really fucked up! The tooth directly in line with the cleft (idk what it's called, it's the one between the left canine and the left front tooth) was turned 180° and there was no adult tooth behind it. I discovered in elementary school that I could bite holes with this tooth in paper, like a bizarre hole-puncher. But the dentist turned that tooth the right way around, and I couldn't do it anymore. :(
Basically, this tooth was the bane of my dental existence. I was too young to even think about having an implant, but pulling it out would have screwed over the alignment of the rest of my teeth. So I had a surgery to try and strengthen the gumline! The surgeon took part of my palate and transplanted it to the gum over that stupid tooth. If I lift my lip, you'd see it: it's really obviously... bulgier than the rest of my gumline. I didn't go fully under but I closed my eyes so I wouldn't, you know, see bits of my mouth being cut out ugh. But JESUS CHRIST THAT SURGERY HURT. I was given this weird chewing gum-like bandage to put over the wounds, but it fell off a lot. I swallowed orzo pasta a lot.
The second surgery was to try and keep my teeth from turning once I stopped wearing retainers. They did this by cutting whatever elastic mouth bits are in the triangle-shaped gum parts between your front teeth. I am not sure this really did anything in the long run.
Somewhere in there I also got my wisdom teeth removed (thankfully I only had bottom ones) and the sites got infected and I had to constantly swish with warm salt water on my visit to DisneyWorld, but that is not cleft-related. I don't think I'm missing any other surgeries.
The last surgery actually dealt that stupid tooth ONCE AND FOR ALL!1!! I had to do SOMETHING about it; it was dead weight and liable to fall out any moment anyway. The dentist gave me a choice: I could have an implant, I could have a bridge with no drilling, or I could have a bridge with minimal drilling. Implant was definitely out; I was so sick and tired of recovering from having my gums cut open. He persuaded me to get something called a "butterfly bridge" -- it's not as intense as an implant, but it's stronger than a normal bridge.
He had to pull out that baby tooth for this, but there was really no bleeding so, yeah, it was definitely time to do something. He shaved down the canine tooth next to it so he could put a cap on it. The bridge was attached to this cap and stretched to the leftmost front tooth where it was anchored. (I really hope I am explaining this right, otherwise I can draw it!) The fake tooth is attached to the bridge and fits in between the canine and front tooth, just like a normal adult tooth. Since it's not an implant, there's a small gap between it and my gum. I am always super careful to brush in between it, since the dentist told me that if I didn't, I was at serious risk for gum rot and that scared the shit out of me.
It's really nice, though. It took me almost a year to get over that mental hurdle that "THIS TOOTH WILL FALL OUT IF I BITE DOWN ON IT!!" since I'd been thinking that for most of my life! I always bit with the right side of my mouth, and chewed mostly on that side, too. But I started biting down on fruit and it didn't fall out, and that is awesome and I love being able to do that. Although I think I still use the right side of my mouth automatically, haha.
END SURGERY DESCRIPTIONS!
Crap, that got long. And that's only the technical side of the story.
Anyway, my cleft has always had major influence on how people perceived me and also how I perceived them, and how I perceive myself. Since I don't feel like structuring this properly, I'll just put down anecdotes.
In elementary school, I judged people by how fast they brought up my cleft when we met. If they asked almost instantly, "What's wrong with your face?" I struck them off the list of possible friends. If they didn't, I was friendlier to them. I don't remember if those people asked about my cleft later. It's possible they didn't; direct questions were actually pretty rare, now that I think of it.
If they did ask me why my lip was like that, my answer was usually, "Because otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand me." I was pretty cold about this.
There was one instance of serious teasing that I remember. It was first grade, I think, and this boy whose name I will never forget told me my face would split all the way down the middle. It made me cry, and I harbored a serious, unrelenting grudge against him all the way through high school. I still have that grudge against him, although we were rarely classmates and never talked.
I thought I'd gotten over that insta-grudge but NO, NO I HAD NOT! Junior year of high school my mom took me to a college guidance counselor. I was already pretty iffy after fifteen minutes; the counselor kept telling me I needed to take physics to be accepted into a college (despite my protests that I strongly dislike the sciences), it would look good even if I didn't get an A in the class and it wasn't AP, I should really try and get into that physics course, and oh, I should also buy the physics book just in case! If I read it over the summer I might be interested and join the class and she thought physics was really important because colleges think so!
(For the record, I did not take the physics course and I got into my first choice of college on early decision with a bonus scholarship so FUCK THAT SHIT, MAN.)
But then! Then she said something that instantly turned my doubtfulness into pure, unadulterated dislike.
"You're sitting with the right side of your face visible to me [i.e. the "undamged" side], is that because you're trying to hide your cleft?"
BAM! Snap decision! I am not going back to you. It's really hard to explain why that sort of question makes me hate a person. Maybe it was just so unprofessional. Maybe I just really, really dislike it when my physical (... "deformity" is too harsh a word) quirks are pointed out non sequiteur. But it was clear to me that I hadn't -- and still haven't, I think -- gotten over that habit of judging people based on whether they bring up my cleft or not.
I have never seriously considered plastic surgery to smooth out my lips and make them look more "normal." I tell myself I've spent 21 years becoming comfortable with the way I look, and I don't want to spend another 20 years getting comfortable with a new look.
I'm terrified of public speaking because I am really self-conscious about the way I sound. It started when I got a tape player that could record and play back, and my sister and I had fun being silly with it. I was shocked when I heard my voice play back, though. It was deeper and more... more nasal than it sounded in my head! It sounded like I had a cold! I thought it was the tape player's fault, but eventually I realized that my voice sounds different to other peoples' ears than it does in mine.
I sound like my nose is stuffed, like I'm sick or suffering from allergies on a daily basis. This is not true. I am constantly blowing my nose, which may seem like I'm sick or allergic but this is not true, either! I think it's a quirk of my physiology that gives me a runny nose almost all the time. I do have a passage that goes from where my upper gumline and top lip meet directly to my nose, and there may be other weird things about my back palate that I'm not aware of. I used to be the envy of my sister because I could make milk come out my nose and she couldn't. xD One of the reasons I don't drink soda is because I tried my aunt's Diet Pepsi as a child, but the carbonation went straight up that passageway into my nose. I am also leery of spicy foods, because goddamn is it uncomfortable getting spice up that way!
I'm still better off than my father, who sometimes gets rice or corn or fish bones (aaaaugh) up his nose because he has a hole in his palate.
I have never actually said this to anyone, but I resent the term "mouth breather" when used as an insult. Some of us are physically incapable of breathing through our noses! I chew with my mouth open because otherwise I'd pass out... although I've noticed that I try to keep it closed when eating with people not family.
On a related note, my biggest irrational fear is being kidnapped and gagged. It's supposed to only keep you quiet, but I am pretty sure I would slowly and uncomfortably suffocate instead.
I think I've talked about all the cleft-related things I really wanted to. This is an insanely long post, and if you made it all the way -- or most of the way -- through, I thank you very much for taking the time to read this. I hope you have learned something new (and interesting?) about me.