A new jaw and a new house?

I have so many big things going on right now, it's hard to feel too much stress about any one given thing. The big list is: my surgery, trying to buy a house, Shelly's upcoming wedding and then Adam's birthday weekend. Of course the wedding and Adam's birthday aren't super stressful things to think about, but they do require some planning...We put an offer in on a home that we LOVE. It's got a wonderful back yard that is pretty much the largest we can expect in the area we are planning to move to and a spacious back covered porch. Adam and I are both looking so forward to spending a lot of time outdoors with the puppy (near future, hopefully puppies plural). We will want everyone to come visit us and will probably be eating a lot more BBQ!

They countered our offer pretty quickly and the request they came back with was kind of crazy so we met them half way. Adam and I are still anxiously waiting to hear something back about our counter offer back to them, and this is where I have to really try to relax and trust that things will work out for the best. It's hard to imagine finding another home that we would like as much as this one, but the reality of it is that their are a lot of other houses if this one doesn't work out.

I had an adjustment at the ortho today, probably the last one before my surgery. I have to go back for a visit the Thurs before surgery so they can do some molds and put the surgical hooks on each bracket. Some of my brackets already have a little hook built onto them for rubber bands but most don't, so they have to make hooks on all of them before surgery so that I can use rubber bands on every tooth afterwards. I am guessing from everything I've read that they will be a pain to deal with for the days in between getting them on and then going into surgery. Oh well, at least I got the OK from Dr. G regarding my surgery date. I figured if the surgeon said I was ready then that was good enough, but I was still a little nervous about what Dr. G would say. The assistant said that Dr. G bent my top wire a certain way to where it pulled one of my front teeth down too low and so they had to push it back up again =( That tooth really didn't want to go into the wire so it was pretty painful at the appointment, but thankfully my teeth aren't really sore at all right now. Each adjustment had started hurting less and less but the one before this one, my teeth were REALLY sore so it kind of threw me off. I guess in hindsight it's because they were pulling one of my teeth down...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the house and now it's probably time to file my taxes...I know I know, I waited until the last minute, but I did this on purpose because of the home buyers tax credit...I am just submitting an extension to give us more time to secure a house and get the credit =D.

The good news!

After months of battling with my insurance company, while my surgeon's office only helped by intermittently offering encouragement to not give up (the other half of the time they were trying to convince me to do the surgery night finish fighting with the insurance later...) I switched to an in network surgeon who had a dedicated worker whose only job was to get my surgery approved. I started trying to get this approved back in August of 08 to no avail, and then once my new surgeon's office submitted the info, I received approval in 2 days. 2 DAYS! So I now have an official surgery date to look forward to: May 26th. Just a little over a month away, and I'm so excited.

Although I sort of went into shock after I got the good news (surgery finally approved) because instead of thinking solely of my distaste for insurance companies now I had no choice put to focus on the actual surgery actually happening. So I felt a little scared, and sort of like, wait why am I doing all of this again? But that stage didn't last for very long, I gave that decision a lot of thought long ago and I decided to do this so I am not backing out now! I just now that everything is going to go by so quickly...I have an adjustment at the ortho on Wednesday where I will get to tell Dr. G the great news! And then on May 11th, I have an appointment with the surgeon for sort of a pre surgery information session, well info for me and updated models for him to practice the surgery with...I will have to have an appointment set up to get the surgical hooks put on at the ortho and then before I know it, the big day will be here! Since the day before is Memorial Day and both my mom and I will be off of work, she will fly in the weekend before and we will get to have some fun time before I am essentially an invalid and all of her time is spent trying to find creative ways to satiate my hunger for food while only have a very tiny opening in my mouth in which to eat any. We are also going out of town in a few weekends for Adam's birthday so that will also help the weeks fly by!

I have had this surgery as a source of worry and stress for over a year now, and I am so excited to get it over with! My biggest concern is all of the weight I will lose in the weeks after the surgery by not being able to eat normally, but hopefully adding protein powder to pretty much everything will help and Adam will hopefully have some other ideas in that area as well to keep me healthy and the weight I do have from falling off! People are so rude and quick to point out how thin I am, so I dread hearing what they would have to say if I lose too much...and of course, for my own health, it would be a sign that I am not getting enough nutrition if I can't keep from losing weight so I just want to avoid that for many reasons! Once this is all over, I hope my enhanced chewing abilities will make it possible for me to maintain a higher/healthier weight but I will have to wait and see if that will happen.

I have tried to do a few blogs since getting my braces and haven't been able to keep up past a few posts, but I will try to do a better job with this one. I probably wouldn't have had the courage to go through with this had it not been for the many journals I read detailing the pre surgery optimism, the post surgery frustrations and depression and then the final entries where we find out that after the recovery, everyone always comes to the conclusion that it was all worth it.