1ST APPOINTMENT

I went to the clinic where my younger sister is currently doing her braces but the receptionist said that Dr Colin Chin does not handle cases like mine (class III underbite). I was given a referral letter to Alfred Cheng Orthodontic Clinic at Mount E. 

Dr Alfred Cheng told me to consider jaw surgery. Without a jaw surgery, the root problem of the jaw structure remains uncorrected. Braces push the upper set of teeth forward and lower set of teeth backwards to give an illusion of correctly-aligned teeth. That will take 1.5 years followed by an implant surgery.

However, prior to the surgery, braces are used to worsen the underbite first. Post jaw surgery, I will then proceed with the normal braces that most people know about. Finally, there will be an implant surgery after the braces stage.

At the end of consultation, he gave me a referral letter to see Dr Winston Tan, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, for advice. I was in such a dilemma that I just went to Starbucks at Wheelock Place, ordered a bottle of their Carrot Medley, started Googling on Ipad & Whatsapping friends for opinions. 


Eventually, I decided not to proceed with jaw surgery because:
(1) It is quite a major surgery and recovery takes months. Starting school in SMU in August 2012 and I have no guts to go to school with a swollen face. 
(2)I have no idea how to explain this to my father. My sister took SO LONG to convince that my father that having braces is okay. (& thereafter, I just happily jumped onto the bandwagon. Similar to me, my dad is extremely stubborn on some issues.)
(3) Financial costs. The money is there but that doesn't mean I have to spend it away. Personally, I think it's too much to spend close to 20k on teeth. I'll rather keep the money for future investments or a master's degree. In terms of utility, jaw surgery is definitely classified as a 'want' and not a 'need' (and I don't even want it that much). 
(4) Uncertainty & Fear. Googling for blogs and watching Youtube videos on REAL people who undergone orthognathic surgeries, I realize that the people looked pretty different. I am perfectly comfortable with how I look like now. I don't see any need for change. The guys pretty much looked the same but I have to say, the girls do look hotter (yes hotter, not prettier, idk why!) after surgery. The problem here is that the patients have braces to worsen their underbite beforehand. Thus, the contrast between the BEFORE and AFTER is huge. I have no idea how they will look like if they were to do braces to correct their underbite only.

Blogs documenting the process of underbite correction with braces only is so RARE. I had a horrible time digging out the scarce information. This is the reason why I want to have this blog. I hope to provide valuable information for patients who wish to correct their underbite with braces only and wishes to know more about the final results. 

I guess I'll never know how I look like post-jaw surgery. I'll see the results after 2 years. I figured that if I really hate my side profile at some point in life (currently fine with it), I'll just get rich and have enough spare cash to splurge on a jaw surgery lol.