#craniofacial

i've had 11 surgeries (feeding tube, adenoids removed, palate repairs, and ear tubes)

i have this sick as fuck second belly button and honestly sometimes i forget that most people only have one and i have to do a double take when i see other people's boring abdomens

i have a list of foods that i cannot eat because they taste like general anesthesia (including but not limited to: whoppers, onion rings, cranberry juice, blue candy hearts, and wintergreen life savers)

i was diagnosed with arfid recently, but i've had it my entire life because i had a feeding tube for the first year of my life and so i just cannot handle most food textures

i have really bad social skills and low self-esteem because i got bullied when i was younger because people couldn't understand me because my voice was really weird, this got better with surgeries but it didn't fix my lack of social skills

I HATED SPEECH THERAPY, like 14 years of it did not make s sounds easier to pronounce

i need hearing aids but i can't get them because i have holes in my ears and extreme drainage, but the holes are good because they allow my ears to drain but the fact that there's drainage is still bad and ahhhhhh

i'm 19 but i still have to go back and forth between the children's hospital and the regular one when it comes to palate stuff and it's honestly annoying sometimes (everyone's nice though so it's fine)

eating is awful because nose stuff i don't want to go into detail but iykyk (don't make me laugh while eating)

i don't have a uvula and when people find out, it's suddenly the most interesting fact they know about me and i don't get it

not even i know my full medical history it is so incredibly complex

i have a collection of my wristbands

the worst fucking thing in the world was the stupid nasal endoscopy, like early covid brain-poking tests were fucking nothing compared to that stupid camera going up my nose

mouth breathing

i have random vocal/breathing tics (i guess tic is the right term?) and they are annoying but yeah

every goddamn time i went to the orthodontist, he would always say every FUCKING TIME "don't let your mom tell you that you have a big mouth because i'm here to tell you otherwise" LIKE I GET IT

when i got my teeth pulled, the laughing gas didn't work because 1.) that shit's so weak and 2.) i had to breathe it in through my nose exclusively (mouth breathing point), but they didn't believe me and went along with the procedure anyway and after experiencing that, hell has nothing on me

my role model growing up was lentil bean, the cleft palate dog

the only piece of media i ever related to was Wonder, but even that one contributed to me feeling like i hadn't gone through enough to consider my cleft palate a big deal

i am a musician (singer and percussionist) but i can't breathe, hear, or speak properly and so i bet you can imagine how hellish that is

i had to quit dance when i was younger because i kept missing entire seasons because of my surgeries (since recovery was like 4 weeks sometimes) and i really wish that i didn't have to