About Me

Hello! (:

Welcome to my journey of recovering from both my rhinoseptoplasty/turbinoplasty and my maxillary jaw surgery! 

I am currently just a wee little 18 year old who lives in colorful Colorado! I'm in love with music and it's a passion of mine. I'm a choir nerd and a band geek. I currently can play the piano, the guitar, kinda the ukulele, the clarinet, and I love singing! So music is my therapy. . .

I'll be attending college this August and I'm a tad nervous o.O I'll be majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Biochemistry and I can't tell you how many emotions are running through are my mind! Anyway, that's thing and I can't be more excited and I'll probably be blogging about that as well! (:

So here's a little bit more about why I've been having these surgeries and all the type of orthodontic/dental work I've had over the years:

I was born with a birth defect called cleft lip and palate. Basically what ends up happening is there is tissue in both the roof of one's mouth (your palate) and one's lip that do not connect. Apparently about every 1 or 2 babies out of 1000 in America are born with this little birth defect. However, I was born in South Korea so maybe that little fact doesn't pertain to me. So, because of that issue, I've had a lot of orthodontic work in the past 18 years of my life. My first surgery occurred when I was about 3 and a half months old after I had been adopted and sent off to America when I was about 2 and a half months old. So I was given surgeries from basically the time I was a baby. And while it's been a definite hardship for myself and for my family, it's has also made me so much stronger. I've gotten tired of the silly questions like "Why do you have a scar in the middle of your face?" or even just the idea that people are afraid to ask me why I have a scar and never ask me. I also get unbelievably tired of hearing of how I am doing after surgeries and what's it like to be adopted and several other questions. But as time has gone, it's unfortunately become a normality in my life. 

I was put into braces when I was in 5th grade. . . so about when I was 11 years old. I was given braces on my upper teeth and an expander ( an evil contraption, if I do say so myself). I had my expander for a year and it was taken out and replaced with lovely braces to match my upper teeth for my lower teeth. I had braces for about 7 years (give or take a year or a half a year). They were removed on November 26th of 2013. And what a blessing it was! It felt great!!! 

Of course, (I'm going out of order) I was given maxillary jaw surgery on March 28th of 2013. . . so before I got my braces off. And what a journey it has been! It brought many emotions to me from depression, worry, anxiety, nervousness, loneliness, happiness, excitedness (not a word. . . ), and plenty of other emotions! I managed to recover quite well from it. . . with a couple complications. I had bone showing in my right upper gums and I had some tightness in my gums on the left side. During my jaw surgery, they closed a fistula (a hole) that I've from being born with cleft lip and palate. He also worked a little bit on my septum (apparently he straightened it out), and then he moved my upper jaw forward a couple mm forward! And that was that! I was able to write some kick-ass college application papers because of this surgery and it really has helped my self-confidence (despite the fact it also lowered it too). It came with it's other complications like eating (drinking?) a liquid diet for about 8 weeks. And boy was that frustrating. Brushing my teeth became more of a hassle than normal and I really hated the fact that I looked like a person with several nuts in her mouth (excuse the pun) or someone who got hit multiple times by a WWE fighter.  I also was given this absolutely horrible splint in my mouth that was in there for who knows how long. (I know there's a blog post about it somewhere). So yes! This surgery was both a blessing and a curse!

And now here I am today. . . recovering from a rhinoseptoplasty/turbinoplasty/a whole lot of other shit that I can't think of the name of. (Oops). This surgery occurred on July 24th of 2014. I decided (with help from my parents of course) to get this surgery for years and years. Same goes for the jaw surgery. Anyway, it's been a long journey as well to this surgery and it's had it's own complications. I can't breathe at all through my nose at times and it's beyond frustrating. I've always been a mouth breather (however after the jaw surgery, I was able to breathe through my nose a little bit better) but this surgery is supposed to truly help me with this issue. This is why I was given a turbinoplasty and a septoplasty! I currently have some splints inside both of my nostrils and a splint/cast thing on the top of my nose and I'm going to getting it off on August 1st 2014 and boy am I looking forward to it! I was fortunate enough to not have any bruising from this surgery (I did in the last one) and I was so glad to hear that. Again, on the unfortunate side, swelling won't completely be gone until another year and half but this time around, I'm actually quite excited to just be done recovering and be able to breathe through my nose like a normal human being! So this recover has had it's ups and downs as all do! I've had several horrible headaches and some really bad pain in my nose. I've also had the upset stomach/nausea and some vomiting which were all things that occurred in the last surgery as well. And I will continue to post my recovery to this particular surgery as time goes on. 

I decided to post this blog to just vent and to reflect and just talk to people who are experiencing similar things as myself. I know for myself that it can be extremely scary to go through things alone and feel like nobody really understands what you're going through. And this blog is to show people that you aren't alone and I promise that there is someone out there going through similar experiences and feeling similar emotions! I also just wanted to be able to go back for myself and see how much I've changed and how much I've learned and so far it's been a really cool experience and I'm so glad I started this blog. . . and now I have somewhere to post about all my surgeries! (:

If you have any questions for me. . . you can always ask them to me on my email at: hey_kendi@hotmail.com or ask them to me on my other blog at: collegechickadvice.tumblr.com and click the ASK tab at the top and I'll post it back here! (:

I hope that you guys find my blog helpful and we all learn something from it! 

And here's to my road to many recoveries. . .