Getting braces at any age is usually a cosmetic choice—or maybe one that can help children chew with more ease.
But for Imgur user Brittany Ray, they serve a much more important purpose.
In her freshman year of college, she noticed that she started gaining weight strangely. Her jaw started getting fuller, but it wasn’t that noticeable.
By senior year, things were dramatically different.
“It looked like I was 20 pounds heavier on the left side of my face. I just thought I was gaining weight weird and had a crooked smile,” she said. “I would only take pictures with the right side of my face showing, so I don’t have very many full on pictures to post, but here you can see I had a double chin but only on the left side.”
So she went to her dentist to figure out what was really going on.
“My teeth stopped touching and I couldn’t chew or bite down on hard things,” she said. “I went to my orthodontist to get a new retainer and they took X-rays and said I needed to go to an oral surgeon immediately. Turns out I had a unilateral mandibular hyperplasia, basically an inch and a half tumor growing in my left jaw.”
She had to have surgery, obviously. But for eight months, she had to wear braces. Brittany said when you have braces as an adult, not much changes about people's reaction to them.
“I think the worst part of the whole ordeal was how mean people were to me about having braces, it was like being in middle school all over again.”
But surgery was even worse.
“For the first two weeks my eyes were swollen shut,” she said. “My mouth was wired shut for two months and I had to eat through a syringe, it took three months to get to where I could open my mouth wide enough to fit a spoon in.”
She posted the x-rays, which show just how intense the procedure was.
“Overall they broke my lower face in 18 places and put in 15 pins and a bunch of screws.”
Now, she’s free of braces and almost fully recovered.
“I have no feeling in my lower lip and chin, but I am told it will take up to two years to come back,” she says. But she’s no longer ashamed to take photos, and is proud of her progress.
