February 13, 2008

• My Operations: Jawbreaking in High School Part 2

  My Operations: Jawbreaking in High School Part 2

  Part One is located BELOW.

  Trips to the Dentist and the Orthodontist

  By the time I started high school, I was pretty well acquainted with dentist’s offices. When my adult front teeth came in they were bucked pretty badly, and Mother decided quickly that I was to get braces to straighten the artocity. Braces were attached when I was in the sixth grade, and were removed while I was a freshman in high school, scant months before I broke my jaw.  While in junior high, I not only visited my regular dentist, but my orthodondist as well. She was a young Chinese American and had sweet smelling hands, which was fine for me, because her hands were in my mouth for most of the time I knew her.

   Pain seems to have been almost a brother to me growing up. In the late 60s, orthodontia included individual metal rings around each of my front teeth, which were wired tighter and tighter with each visit, and a “face bow” which was inserted into holes mounted in metal rings around my back molars. The “bow” had hooks on the rear, to which I attached an elastic band. Each visit to the orthodontist, when the wires were tightened, caused great pain, and wearing of the face bow would cause throbbing in my whole head. I used to suffer migraine headaches in school, and the pain associated with the orthodontia added insult to injury. In school, my nickname went from “Bucky Beaver” to “Spaceman” as the gear made me look a little like “My Favorite Martian”.

  When the braces were finally removed, my parents were proud of my new bite. I no longer had the overbite or buck teeth, and Dad used to joke that we didn’t buy a new family car when I entered high school because it was in my mouth. I started wearing “retainers” which had plastic form fitting plates for the top and bottom of my mouth, to which were attached metal bands to keep my teeth in place after the wiring of the orthodontia had been removed. I took the retainers out to eat.

  On the morning of the crash into the corner house, I wasn’t wearing the retainers because I’d just finished eating breakfast. One of the doctors consulting with my parents at the hospital told her this was a good thing. If the retainers had been in my mouth when I hit the steering wheel with my jaw, they would have most likely been pushed back into my head along with the jaw, possibly causing more damage to the soft tissue in my mouth with the jagged metal edges, or worse, causing my death by choking on the device.

  A Surgeon for My Mouth

  An oral surgeon was found in Pasadena, and he agreed to keep his office open while Dad drove another 30 or 40 miles from the hospital in  downtown L.A. By now the sun was sinking, and my head hurt harder than any migraine could muster. The ride to his office is blurry in my mind. The shock had almost worn off by this time. I’m sure they possibly gave me pain killers at the hospital. The American Board of Oral Surgery was established in 1946. Oral surgeons are not dentists, but doctors, whose specialty is jaw reconstruction. There was a lot of need for all kinds of medical improvements following World War II, when a lot of soldiers returned from the war in pretty bad condition. Dr. Propper was a tall man, with graying hair and a gregarious personality. At roughly 7 p.m., our car pulled up to his offices and almost immediately I was directed to a patient’s chair, which looked more like something out of a science fiction movie than a dentist’s office.

  The procedure to be performed to bring my jaw back into alignment with my face, and to reinsert the teeth which my mother had been holding on to for 12 hours involved both the actual realignment and then construction of a “plastic cast” around the bottom part of my jaw to keep the jaw in place. I was in surgery for about three hours.

  I’d been wide awake, although in a sort of strange limbo, caused mostly by the shock, for most of the day. Dr. Propper “propped” me up in the oversize dentist’s chair, and gave me a facemask through which he pumped nitrous oxide. Although I’d never taken even a snort of alcohol in my young life, the nitrous oxide caused me to get “high”. I knew my perception was completely out of whack as the good doctor grabbed both sides of my jaw, yanking hard, as one does to an arm or leg that pops out of it’s socket , to “pop” the jaw back in place. To my stoned perception, he shrunk into a smallish dwarf sized man but with a white labcoat, and positioned both his feet on either side of me as he pulled my jaw back into place.

  The rest of the time spent with Dr. Propper that evening involved the application of the “plastic cast”. Instead of the usual practice of knocking out all the teeth and wiring the jaw shut, my mouth would be able to open and close, and I’d be able to eat solid food, albeit diced up in pretty small pieces. My four bottom teeth were reinserted into the cast, and would later be attached to the jaw with root canal surgery.

  The operation deemed a success, I was given more drugs and my father drove us home. Mother had been nervous and upset most of the day. Dad had been stalwart and purposeful. Dr. Propper was a miracle worker. Back at home, nearing 10 pm in the evening, my siblings both awoke and there was a flurry of activity as I was shephered into my bed. I retired for the night without hearing any demands or strict language from either of my parents. We’d all had a long hard day. In the weeks that followed, both my parents had talks with me about responsibility and obedience, but part of the problem lie with the family friend, Bud Weatherby, whose presence I never again saw at our home. The peeps knew that he was partially to blame, so they didn’t come down too hard on me.

  The steering wheel had come down hard enough into my face and that had become a grave punishment.

  A Royal Pain in the Jaw

  The summer of 68 is one I spent mainly from my bed. The healing process was a long and difficult one. I ate my sandwiches cut up into small pieces for nearly five years following the accident. I drank all my beverages through a straw. The summer consisted of many trips to the oral surgeon and the dentist, and I got to visit the Chinese American orthodontist again as plans were made for more orthodontia after the plastic cast would be removed. Eventually my “dead” teeth were successfully reinserted into my jaw. I had my wisdom teeth removed. Seems like each week I was visiting some dentist or doctor for most of the rest of my high school experience.

  I went back to school and was enrolled in “remedial physical education”. This was considered a joke class by most of the “jocks”, but ended up being a perfect fit for me, since we spent a lot of time doing track and field and in the weight room. I became quite adept at pullups, rope climbing, pegs, and running. Even though I was “remedial”. I broke a couple of the school’s records for my age for the 440 yard dash and for pullups.

  As my high school life progressed, I became one of the popular kids, owing to my involvement in student activities like school government, theater, and my tenure with the school newspaper, where I was made editor in my junior year. I had to stay in remedial P.E. for the rest of high school. This was because with a broken jaw they didn’t want me playing football or basketball where one thwock to the jaw would cause more problems than anyone wanted to think about.

  I got another set of braces, wore another face bow for a few years, and read probably every magazine in the orthodontist’s waiting room twice. Highlights for Children became a good friend. Archie comics were fun. I fell in love with both Betty and Veronica. I cringed when reading about “Principal Weatherbee”. I took public transportation to the orthodontist’s , so in some cases, the wreck had helped to disengage me from my watchful mother’s eye, since she couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  My parents sued Bud Weatherby, and collected some of the money to pay for my operations. Since my parents had opted for oral surgery, which wasn’t covered by Kaiser, my father’s HMO, they had to foot the ever spiralling bills. I  believe they settled out of court.  I never saw Weatherby again. I’m pretty sure he was excused from his teaching position, and he possibly never taught in a school from then on, which is possibly a good thing, because he certainly wasn’t too responsible when telling gullible children who like to play like they’re driving to do the real thing.

  Because of my broken jaw, I didn’t get in any fights. I had lots of friends who stuck up for me in any altercations, but I’ve always been pretty tolerant and forgiving, and didn’t get in any trouble. As the high school years passed, my involvement in activities and popularity grew, and everyone in the school knew about my “broken jaw”. It almost became a badge of honor, since I’d actually survived an auto wreck where I’d been driving.

  I began to regale new friends with the “story” and I’ve been telling it to this day. As (bad) luck would have it, when I was scheduled to begin driver training in my junior year, I falied two times, and eventually my mother paid for personal training. I did get a learner’s permit and was able to drive to football games as a junior, and had my own car as a senior. However,  I was involved in numerous auto crashes throughout the next few years, and it took a long while for me to be comfortable driving.

  I had to “cut up” my food until I was in college. I finally had my second set of braces removed while a senior in high school, and I can remember my mother being upset because I had braces on when they took my graduation photos for the school yearbook. I spent so much time in doctor’s and dentist’s offices, that after this debacle finally ended, I wouldn’t set foot in a dentist’s office for many many years.

  “Break a Jaw” was written as a joke more than once in those autograph programs for the all school play when I was a high school senior. Even when I got my first real job after high school I had to let my employer know that I had a broken jaw. My jawline is slightly altered, and one side is a few millimeters off from the other. I hardly have a “chin” at all, although it’s more evident now than when I was in school.  I grew a beard in college, and haven’t shaved it off since. For most of my college life and through my 20s and 30s my beard was a full wraparound, but now I wear a goatee.

  My bite was never perfect following the crash, and after the many operations and restructurings of my teeth and mouth. Eventually I could eat a sandwich without first cutting it up into pieces. I don’t think I was able to take a bite out of an apple until I was in my mid twenties. As with all the accidents which change and reconform us, the pain of my broken jaw soon faded from my life, but has always been at the forefront of my memory.

  I always give this advice to anyone who questions me. If in doubt about anything you feel is wrong, even if someone, like a trusted teacher and family friend, tells you to go ahead and do something you think is questionable, don’t listen to them. Find out first. Clear everything with your parents while they’re in charge. My mother was in the house, only a few yards from where the vehicle was parked which caused my family innumerable pains and hardships, and  caused me more pain than I’d known up till then in my short life. I know now and knew then that she wouldn’t have agreed, especially in the absence of my father, to have let me “drive” that car.

  Everybody makes mistakes, and God knows I was lucky mine wasn’t fatal. As the doctor told my mother when I was laying in that hallway at Kaiser on the gurney trying to figure out why I could feel my uvula so close to where my bottom teeth should have been, if I had been wearing my retainers, I would have soon been planted six feet underground, because I would have choked on the small pink pieces of plastic, or else they would have cut through the sides of my face when I hit the steering wheel.

  But I don’t want to think about that. However I think about it somewhat everytime I brush my teeth.

  ---

  The photo which accompanies this entry is my sophomore high school yearbook photo. It was taken during the latter part of my freshman year prior to the auto wreck and subsequent jawbreaking. This is part two of my latest entry in the ”Operations” series. Other entries in “My Operations Series” can be found through these links:
  My Operations: My Left Hip (written Aug. 8th, 2005)
  My Operations: My Colonoscopy (written Mar. 1st, 2007)

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