The Grand Finale: One Step (and One Surgery) at a Time

“The Grand Finale”  sounds a bit cooler than “jaw reconstruction surgery”, right? Well, that’s what I’ve decided to call my last big surgery. I was born with a condition called Goldenhar Syndrome, which affected the growth and development of my face. While I have had almost 30 surgeries now (we stopped counting at 20 something), the concept of a surgery still puts butterflies in my stomach.  It’s something that I’m both looking forward to and dreading, but if I look back on my life, there are many times where I’ve been both excited and scared at the same time. I remember being so scared to start high school, to graduate high school, to move to college,  to graduate college, to start a podcast, to travel across the country, to speak in public. And yet this list is now some of my biggest accomplishments! 

Now I don’t know if I would call jaw surgery an “accomplishment”, maybe for the surgeon completing the procedure, but it is a hill I have to climb, and man, does it feel like a big hill. Dr Mehra, the chief of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Boston Medical Center is planning on taking a 3D model of my right jaw hinge and popping it in the left side where I’m missing a bone! How cool is that? It’s helpful for me to lean into the wonder and awe of modern medicine, instead of thinking about recovery times or the nitty-gritty details. It’s all about perspective for me. Yeah, I could think about not eating solid food for weeks, or the time I may spend in the hospital, or the uncertainty of the whole ordeal. Or I can lean into the gratitude that I have access to incredible medical professionals, that I have a support system that is unwavering and unconditional.

As I mentioned, perspective is everything for me, you know I think we all have our hills to climb, the hills we avoid or wish we couldn’t see, or maybe they feel more like mountains that seem jagged and impossible to scale, but I have learned the best way to climb your mountain is to go slowly, one step at a time and no matter how grand that mountain is, I’ve noticed that the view is much better when you get to the top.

This blog post and the ones to follow are a step out of my comfort zone, so I thank you for reading until the end! I am excited (and nervous) to share my journey with you, and I hope that maybe it helps you too, and maybe we can be excited (and nervous) together.