20 years ago a jaw surgery sent my life down a dark and painful path. I'm now trying to spread the word so that others are not subject to the same unnecessary suffering.
I was born with a cleft lip and palate. From the very beginning of my life, I required specialist medical care. I was placed on a long-term treatment plan that involved multiple procedures throughout my childhood and teenage years. This plan culminated in orthognathic surgery at the age of 21, where my upper and lower jaw bones were cut into pieces, re-arranged and screwed back together with surgical screws and plates.
At the time, I trusted my doctors completely. I had been under their care my entire life, and the surgery was presented as the natural and necessary final step of my treatment. I was young, I was trusting, and I had no reason to question what I was being told.
Before the surgery, I asked about the risks. I wanted to know what could go wrong. The answer I received was that the risks were limited to "numbness in the chin" – what a catastrophic inaccuracy that was.
I was not warned about the possibility of chronic pain. I was not warned about the psychological impact. I was not told that this surgery could fundamentally alter the course of my life. I was given a sanitised, incomplete picture of what I was about to undergo, and I made my decision based on that picture.
Following the procedure, I experienced constant pain in my head, face and neck, major depression and the development of PTSD. The aftermath of the surgery was nothing like what I had been led to expect. The pain was relentless and the psychological toll was devastating.
The surgery completely changed the trajectory of my life for the worse. I was once a happy, healthy, young man (although naive), and now I struggle with health and wellbeing every day. What was supposed to be the final step toward normalcy became the beginning of a long and difficult journey through chronic suffering.
One of the hardest parts of this experience has been the loneliness. Since almost no-one can relate to this kind of thing, I felt completely alone. The people around me – family, friends, colleagues – had no frame of reference for what I was going through. Jaw surgery is not something most people think about, let alone understand the consequences of.
I could never communicate what happened in a way that created any understanding. The invisible nature of the damage – the pain, the fatigue, the mental health deterioration – made it nearly impossible for others to grasp the reality of my situation. I looked fine on the outside, so people assumed I was fine.
I have seen the effect this surgery had on my life with perspective now and I know without a doubt it is a cruel and unnecessary thing to do to a person. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see clearly that the risks far outweighed any potential benefits. The surgery did not fix me. It broke me in ways that no one warned me about and that no subsequent treatment has been able to undo.
If you google the risks most sources say the surgery is very safe – this is complete bollocks. If you know anything about scientific scrutiny you will see that the studies purporting orthognathic surgery to be safe are not even close to credible science. They are ALL done by jaw surgeons themselves.
Listening to these studies is like listening to a cigarette company tell you smoking is nearly harmless.
The conflict of interest is staggering. The people conducting the research are the same people whose livelihoods depend on performing the surgery. There is no independent oversight, no long-term follow-up, and no accountability when things go wrong.
And yet, many medical authority websites like mayoclinic, healthline and others are spreading the notion that jaw surgery is low risk, based on these terrible "studies." Patients trust these sources. I trusted these sources. And that trust is being abused.
You might look online and see people saying their jaw surgery went great. You might think the negative experiences are the exception. But consider this: people have incentives to appear well even when they are not. People want to be optimistic, downplay complications and appear strong, confident and beautiful. Suffering is rejected.
Even I was like this, if people asked me in the first few years after the surgery if it was worth it I said yes. I said I felt great. It took years for me to fully acknowledge the damage that had been done. The human desire to appear okay is powerful, and it distorts the picture that prospective patients see when they research this surgery online.
In my research to create this website I discovered hundreds of other accounts just like mine – people who lost their health and quality of life due to jaw surgery. Their stories mirror my own in devastating ways: chronic pain, depression, regret, and a feeling of having been misled by the medical professionals they trusted.
These stories are hard to find – they do not show up on the front page of google, but there are hundreds of them on websites like reddit.com/r/jawsurgery/, archwired.com, jawsurgeryforums.com, and realself.com. They are buried beneath the positive testimonials, the surgeon-funded studies, and the medical authority websites that parrot the claim that jaw surgery is safe.
This website is my warning to you. You young, naive person who is considering a jaw surgery – for health, for looks, for sleep, for confidence – you are not being told the full story and if you knew it you would run away from jaw surgery.
I am not trying to scare you. I am trying to give you the information that I wish someone had given me. The information that my doctors did not give me. The information that the research papers do not contain. The information that the positive testimonials obscure.
When I was making my decision to do the surgery or not, there was not internet forums about it – I had to take the doctor's word. There was no community of patients sharing their experiences. There was no way to hear from people who had been through it and come out the other side worse off.
But things are different now. Patient testimonials are becoming more and more visible. People are becoming more and more skeptical of modern medical claims. Some doctors are starting to acknowledge that jaw surgery is highly problematic.
The world leading jaw surgery researcher, Professor William Bell, finished his career by publicly stating that all-in-all jaw surgery is "too complicated, too invasive and too unpredictable."
When even the leading expert in the field reaches that conclusion, it should give everyone pause.
The idea that orthognathic surgery is a safe and effective way to treat a person is a lie that is coming to an end. One day it will be fully recognized as a destructive, not corrective, procedure. The weight of patient testimony, the flaws in the research, and the growing awareness of the damage this surgery causes will eventually make the truth undeniable.
Until that day comes, websites like this one will have to do the work that the medical establishment refuses to do: tell the truth.
Don't do what I did. Keep your natural face. — Michael
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