Metal Mouth Message Board

Hello, I've been following this forums on and off for quit a while and recently decided to get jawsurgery. However, my surgery would be purely cosmetical. My chin is very short so I need sliding gyno, and my jaw is recessed so I need bsso along with lefort 1. The problem is that I don't have insurance and know the cost of those three surgeries along with sarpe and braces would be insane so I want to know if there is anything I can do to get insurance or if there are cheap options you guys know of. I would be willing to travel to another country and would really appreciate any information at all.

Thanks in advance to anyone who responds

What country are you in now?

[quote="snapdresser"]What country are you in now?[/quote]

The USA

Well, if you're uninsured then I would suggest buying insurance via your state's insurance marketplace during open enrollment rather than choosing to pay out of pocket for the surgery. For what my surgery cost out of pocket I could have easily paI'd 5 or 6 years worth of insurance premiums. Check exclusions before buying a plan as many plans either exclude jaw surgery or they make approval very difficult. Find out which surgeon you'd want to use, and ask which plans they participate with in order to get "in-network" benefits.

Have you seen an orthodontist? Who told you that you needed these procedures? If you're guessing just by looking at your appearance you might want to consider getting a professional to take a look too.

As a cautionary aside, as a person who is on the other side of this surgery I can assure you that expense should not be the only factor considered before going under the bone saw. This is not a surgery to take lightly. Choosing to go out of the country to let someone saw apart your face and put it back together isn't something to take lightly. I'm all about bargain shopping, but trust me when I tell you that jaw surgery isn't the time to do it. Expertise, experience, and a long track record of positive results should be of primary importance when choosing your care team. I know that I would choose to either wait until I could properly afford this surgery or not get it done at all before I would feel okay handing my face and my future to the lowest bidder. Best of luck! Be safe!

Just saw that you said it would be done for only cosmetic reasons. Insurance won't do much for you then.

If I were you and I had a functional bite and only wanted cosmetic improvement I would go to a plastic surgeon and ask about using fillers or other not-so-invasive methods. Having lived through it I can say that I wouldn't touch this operation with a 10 foot pole for cosmetic reasons.

MagnoliaMama wrote:Just saw that you said it would be done for only cosmetic reasons. Insurance won't do much for you then.

If I were you and I had a functional bite and only wanted cosmetic improvement I would go to a plastic surgeon and ask about using fillers or other not-so-invasive methods. Having lived through it I can say that I wouldn't touch this operation with a 10 foot pole for cosmetic reasons.

This. Exactly this. After going through a botched first surgery and having to have 2 years of hell that lead to a revision surgery and now I am losing all of my 4 upper front teeth due to damage through my first round of treatment..... take it from me, sometimes you can end up worse off than you already are if you roll the dice on this surgery for something like a weak chin. I mean if it bothers you that bad and it's seriously the end of the world rock bottom for you and you've got no other choice and the risk is worth the reward, then I guess go for it. But if it's something you can live with, IMO, it's definitely NOT worth doing this surgery for. It's very risky, and even when it all goes well, it's still a super long hard tough thing to go through! Just my .02 there.

I really appreciate you guys' comments. That's why I came to this site because I figured I could get good advice. After reading what you guys said, I will definitely not go to a cheap surgeon but what if I went to a good surgeon? LyraM45, did you go to a cheap surgeon or why did your surgery turn out so bad?

This is something that I really need to fix so I will end up doing it even if I have to pay out of pocket but I would like to know if you guys have any suggestions to good surgeons that wouldn't butcher me or things you wish you would have known before

MagnoliaMama, would you mind expanding why you are so against it? Isn't the chances of it going right lower than it going bad?

Cricketjaw - All surgeons who are in-network in a good insurance policy are "cheap". That's not to say they aren't "good". Besides, the term "cheap" is relative. $20k is "cheap" for a LeFort I/BSSO/SG out-of-pocket in the U.S. An out-of-network "top" surgeon could charge $50-80k for it. Are you quite sure you can't get insurance coverage based on oral trauma, sleep apnea, or any other criteria?

The chances of having partial numbness and difficulty acclimating to your new face are huge and IMO severely understated in the generic pre-op disclaimer. If you're taking the dive for cosmetic reasons you should be mentally prepared for that, regardless of what surgeon you go to. There will be times that you regret having it done. That doesn't even touch on the less likely but far more serious side effects which of course nobody expects going in.

cricketjaw wrote:I really appreciate you guys' comments. That's why I came to this site because I figured I could get good advice. After reading what you guys said, I will definitely not go to a cheap surgeon but what if I went to a good surgeon? LyraM45, did you go to a cheap surgeon or why did your surgery turn out so bad?

This is something that I really need to fix so I will end up doing it even if I have to pay out of pocket but I would like to know if you guys have any suggestions to good surgeons that wouldn't butcher me or things you wish you would have known before

MagnoliaMama, would you mind expanding why you are so against it? Isn't the chances of it going right lower than it going bad?

Hey cricket,
I wouldn't say I'm against the surgery, but I would say that I am 100% in favor of the least invasive solution to a problem. I'm going on 6 weeks post-op and my surgeons executed both procedures as close to perfect as anyone could hope for. I've had such minimal complications that even mentioning them at this point seems silly; they've been mostly minor and transient. That said, this is the hardest, most painful thing I've ever lived through. I've been places emotionally that were darker than dark. I've been in inescapable physical pain for extended periods of time without the ability to communicate my needs through my clenched teeth. It's been horrifically stressful, both on myself AND on my family. I've needed more help than I ever imagined I would.

For a frame of reference about what this compares to, I've delivered two big babies in under 2 hours each, without so much as an aspirin and I was home, happily cooking dinner with my 20 hour old (10 lb) baby strapped to my chest. I had a major reconstruction of my nose and sinuses 6 months ago that I was only "on the shelf" for about a day afterwards and I was climbing cliffs on the Appalachian Trail at 2 weeks post-op. After being diagnosed with a chronic pain disease years ago I hopped a flight to Central America with a backpack and hiked until I 'mind over mattered' it. I'm neither a stranger to pain, nor one to give in to it and wallow. This surgery kicked my ass. I spent 20 years ramping myself up for it, reading everything I could and consulting with several orthodontic teams and OMFS's. After it became obvious that there were two choices left, (either lose my teeth or do the surgery) I pulled the trigger after very careful deliberation. To approach this casually would be an error of life-altering proportions. I urge you very strongly to consider your choices carefully and with sober clarity. This is not a nose job or a face lift. This is your skull being sawed into chunks. This is metal plates and screws holding your face together. This is months and years of recovery....when it goes well! When it goes wrong it can go very very very wrong.

Please think it through. Watch the surgery on YouTube. Be as informed as possible about what's waiting for you should you go ahead with your plans. Best of luck, cricket!

Thanks for your responses. I will go to a surgeon and see if I can somehow get my insurance to pay for it

Do you guys have any tips for that? I already did a sleep apnea test and I don't have it

Also another question. Is orthonormal surgery considered dental?

cricketjaw wrote:I really appreciate you guys' comments. That's why I came to this site because I figured I could get good advice. After reading what you guys said, I will definitely not go to a cheap surgeon but what if I went to a good surgeon? LyraM45, did you go to a cheap surgeon or why did your surgery turn out so bad?

This is something that I really need to fix so I will end up doing it even if I have to pay out of pocket but I would like to know if you guys have any suggestions to good surgeons that wouldn't butcher me or things you wish you would have known before

MagnoliaMama, would you mind expanding why you are so against it? Isn't the chances of it going right lower than it going bad?

Nope... not a "cheap" surgeon (although I'd argue she operates like one based on my results!). I actually went to one of the higher regarded surgeons in the Bay Area. She's the Chief Surgeon of the whole maxfac department at Oakland Kaiser. I went with the Chief Surgeon and still got butchered. I mean, mistakes happen, but how she treated me in the instances after the error was just down right negligence.

As for why the surgery went so bad-- who knows. Leading theory is she left the room and let her resident do my surgery. But, I'll never know exactly what went down while I was out!

cricketjaw wrote:Thanks for your responses. I will go to a surgeon and see if I can somehow get my insurance to pay for it

Do you guys have any tips for that? I already did a sleep apnea test and I don't have it

Sometimes the need for surgery is not always sleep apnea related, so you might still get it covered. Get with a maxfac surgeon and have them diagnose your jaw issue. Try to get insurance that does not exclude jaw work (you should be able to look it up in the plans when you shop around during open season), and if you meet what is considered medically necessary (some plans have minimum measurements, minimum health issues resulting from the wonky jaw, etc, etc), then you should have coverage. A good surgeons office will know how to navigate insurance and what they'll need to submit on their end to insurance.

Magnolia mama, would you do the surgery if you had severe sleep apnea and the alternative is sleeping with a cpap for the rest of your life? That's my situation. I'm only 56.

janakaybravo wrote:Magnolia mama, would you do the surgery if you had severe sleep apnea and the alternative is sleeping with a cpap for the rest of your life? That's my situation. I'm only 56.

Well, that would depend. If you've exhausted every other option, then I'd say go for it. Before crossing the surgical bridge I'd make sure it was a last resort though. My husband has awful sleep apnea that plays havoc with both of our sleeping lives and probably leaves his general health in worse shape than it would be otherwise...but he's also 30-40 lbs overweight so there's not much point in addressing the apnea until he loses weight. Trust me that losing even large amounts of weight is easier the recovering from DJS.

I've known a couple of people who've elected to go the jaw surgery route for their sleep apnea and it was a good outcome that they'd choose again. So, I guess I'd encourage you to seek relief, but to try to solve the problem in the least traumatic way possible and to leave surgery as a last resort. If you've done everything possible and you're still tethered to the CPAP, go for it! My breathing wasn't a focus for me (mine was having functional teeth and avoiding otherwise inevitable tooth loss)but I've really enjoyed the benefits of a larger airway.