I'm a man, and because I had a severe protruding jaw and malocclusion, I started orthodontic treatment right after I was discharged from the military. It wasn't regular orthodontics; from the start, it was done with double-jaw surgery in mind (pre-surgical orthodontics). After about 2 years, I had surgery at a private clinic in Seoul in March 2020. (I did the orthodontics outside Seoul.) When I was doing pre-surgical orthodontics, I was studying for exams, so it took a long time. They did say that after about 10 months of orthodontics, I could have the surgery. At the time of the surgery, medical accident cases at plastic surgery clinics were an issue, so I had the surgery done by an oral and maxillofacial dental surgeon. It was my first time going under general anesthesia, and it was a major surgery, so I was really nervous, but I could endure it because I thought back to my school years and military service when I suffered because of my protruding jaw. I think I got through it by thinking about how I was teased a lot and even heard humiliating things like, “If I had that face, I would k*ll myself.” The surgery took about 2-3 hours, and my mouth was tied shut for almost 2 weeks, so the hardest part was how suffocating and frustrating that feltㅜㅜ During that period, I only had water and New Care, so the weight just dropped off.. I also had something like neuralgia? maybe because the nerves in my upper jaw had been cut and were reconnecting. I remember being in so much pain that I couldn't sleep. After about a month, I could eat things like steamed eggs, and I think life became a bit more manageable. Now that about 2 years have passed, I don't really have any side effects and I'm living well. There was no nerve damage, which I had worried about most, and even if there was a slight amount, after a year it all seemed to come back properly. The feeling that the tip of my nose was a little cold also disappeared by the second year. Actually, from the side my nose looks higher, and as my lower jaw moved inward, my face gained more dimension, so there is even an optical illusion that my eyes look slightly bigger. When I meet people who knew me before the surgery after a long time, they ask if I had something else done besides my jaw.. I'm regretting that I didn't do it even a year earlier. More than anything, I think the biggest change is that I can feel confident when I take photos of myself or when others take photos of me haha (As for sagging under the chin, I guess that can't really be helped, so I think I'll need to get a procedure for it.)
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