Cleft Lip / Palate Support Group
Cleft is a congenital deformity caused by a failure in facial development during gestation. It can be treated with surgery shortly after birth with highly successful results. Cleft occurs in somewhere between one in 600 and one in 800 births. Cleft occurs in several severities and is divided in two major categories: cleft lip and cleft palate.
Hey everyone,
First off this might become a book..a long ass run on sentence..or just a flat out line or 2. First off I'm Troy (waves)..sup and all that. 36 with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. If memory serves I've had 5ish surgeries as a kid and now have 2 scars under my nose. I mention these things due to the forum this is and to get the info out there. You know it's odd cause growing up I never really even realized I was different until middle school. Oh and I'm from the good ol USA. I've been married twice and as friends tell me I've never had trouble getting the ladies. I think this goes into me simply being me. Nothing major just myself. Which again when I think back on life I sometimes feel I got lucky and was able to find out who I am b4 I really focused on having a cleft. Is that a odd thing to say? =)
I have a job in a call center of all places. it's 20ish a hr so the money is good and my position gives me the freedom to make calls other reps wish they had the "power" to make. I enjoy it and hadn't ever really ran into any issues by having a cleft doing phone work. Sure my voice isn't the best but I get by and have recently realized others hear me different then I do myself. That was a sobering thing to realize.
It's something to ponder cause now it seems I've somehow arrived @ a place I don't fully understand. Again having never really seen myself as different I now seem to thinking of little else. It started I feel almost 2 years ago with my divorce. The gal I married was someone I knew since highschool and I was deeply in love with her. The whole situation went south after a year of being married and lasted badly for another year. So a total of 2 years married and 1 of those spent doubting myself. It got to the point where I almost felt like she used my cleft against me to make excuses for her behavior. She wasn't cheating as far as I could tell but when gifts arrived in the mail from some of her male internet gaming buddies a man has to ask questions. The whole thing didn't ever feel right and drove a wedge between us. However I was hearing that due to my cleft I was insecure and that was all it was.
Now I'm a honest person with myself. Try to keep it real and pull no punches. This is life and you gotta either run with it or just step to the side. But this line of thought of hers never made sense but now 2 years after the divorce I still find myself equating everything to my cleft. I've dated a couple gals and have had sex a few times. But I can't seem to find someone for anything really serious. It's weird. So I guess I'm putting this part of the story out there to get feed back from people who have this thing and see what you think.
Now before I go I got just a couple more things to put out there. First off my dad. When I turned 18 he turned over to me a small filing cabinet full of all the paperwork he had gotten on my surgeries and developmental items. I'm 36 and have NEVER even sat down and read thru it all. I did that tonight and couldn't help but love my dad (and mom) even more. Seeing the papers with my dads perfect handwriting just touched me. So much he kept up with that it brought me to tears thinking of him being the last to touch this paper or that. Its just moving.
Alright last and in no way least my teeth. Around age 20ish I started to notice I was having issues. Heres where a small twist to the story comes due to my dad was in the military so for a lot of my youth he wasn't around. Just mom and my sisters. mom being totally southern sought the way to deal with my cleft as nothing to really be spoken about. Perhaps this was why it wasn't ever a issue for me I guess. A double edged sword but due to this I never developed habits that would lead to a long term dental health. So now I'm looking @ having major dental work done. Bascally having everything else extracted and full blown dentures put in. It sucks but I'm actually @ the point where I'm getting swelling and @ times am fearful my face my swell to the point where I don't wanna go outside & to work. Not good. I've started to live in fear of this due to if you don't work you don't get paid and everything else falls apart. It's scary as hell and only adds to the rest. Are they looking @ the cleft or the failure my teeth have become. I've learned ways of hiding it and having tight lipped smiles. I've spoke to some close friends and again they state it's not a issue and I shouldn't be so concerned. but I am cause I know I'm soon to have to get this taken care of.
Alright so that part behind me now I don't know what to do about it. I've got health insurance @ work and last summer tried to set everything up but the docs kept changing everything and the night before I was gonna have everything removed it changed again to the point where I couldn't just give the amount of money they were asking for. It seemed like a hackjob and I didn't want them with their hands in my face when they got that part so horribly wrong.
So now I don't know what to do and am seeking guidance. Help please. =)
And told yea....totally book worthy.
First off this might become a book..a long ass run on sentence..or just a flat out line or 2. First off I'm Troy (waves)..sup and all that. 36 with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. If memory serves I've had 5ish surgeries as a kid and now have 2 scars under my nose. I mention these things due to the forum this is and to get the info out there. You know it's odd cause growing up I never really even realized I was different until middle school. Oh and I'm from the good ol USA. I've been married twice and as friends tell me I've never had trouble getting the ladies. I think this goes into me simply being me. Nothing major just myself. Which again when I think back on life I sometimes feel I got lucky and was able to find out who I am b4 I really focused on having a cleft. Is that a odd thing to say? =)
I have a job in a call center of all places. it's 20ish a hr so the money is good and my position gives me the freedom to make calls other reps wish they had the "power" to make. I enjoy it and hadn't ever really ran into any issues by having a cleft doing phone work. Sure my voice isn't the best but I get by and have recently realized others hear me different then I do myself. That was a sobering thing to realize.
It's something to ponder cause now it seems I've somehow arrived @ a place I don't fully understand. Again having never really seen myself as different I now seem to thinking of little else. It started I feel almost 2 years ago with my divorce. The gal I married was someone I knew since highschool and I was deeply in love with her. The whole situation went south after a year of being married and lasted badly for another year. So a total of 2 years married and 1 of those spent doubting myself. It got to the point where I almost felt like she used my cleft against me to make excuses for her behavior. She wasn't cheating as far as I could tell but when gifts arrived in the mail from some of her male internet gaming buddies a man has to ask questions. The whole thing didn't ever feel right and drove a wedge between us. However I was hearing that due to my cleft I was insecure and that was all it was.
Now I'm a honest person with myself. Try to keep it real and pull no punches. This is life and you gotta either run with it or just step to the side. But this line of thought of hers never made sense but now 2 years after the divorce I still find myself equating everything to my cleft. I've dated a couple gals and have had sex a few times. But I can't seem to find someone for anything really serious. It's weird. So I guess I'm putting this part of the story out there to get feed back from people who have this thing and see what you think.
Now before I go I got just a couple more things to put out there. First off my dad. When I turned 18 he turned over to me a small filing cabinet full of all the paperwork he had gotten on my surgeries and developmental items. I'm 36 and have NEVER even sat down and read thru it all. I did that tonight and couldn't help but love my dad (and mom) even more. Seeing the papers with my dads perfect handwriting just touched me. So much he kept up with that it brought me to tears thinking of him being the last to touch this paper or that. Its just moving.
Alright last and in no way least my teeth. Around age 20ish I started to notice I was having issues. Heres where a small twist to the story comes due to my dad was in the military so for a lot of my youth he wasn't around. Just mom and my sisters. mom being totally southern sought the way to deal with my cleft as nothing to really be spoken about. Perhaps this was why it wasn't ever a issue for me I guess. A double edged sword but due to this I never developed habits that would lead to a long term dental health. So now I'm looking @ having major dental work done. Bascally having everything else extracted and full blown dentures put in. It sucks but I'm actually @ the point where I'm getting swelling and @ times am fearful my face my swell to the point where I don't wanna go outside & to work. Not good. I've started to live in fear of this due to if you don't work you don't get paid and everything else falls apart. It's scary as hell and only adds to the rest. Are they looking @ the cleft or the failure my teeth have become. I've learned ways of hiding it and having tight lipped smiles. I've spoke to some close friends and again they state it's not a issue and I shouldn't be so concerned. but I am cause I know I'm soon to have to get this taken care of.
Alright so that part behind me now I don't know what to do about it. I've got health insurance @ work and last summer tried to set everything up but the docs kept changing everything and the night before I was gonna have everything removed it changed again to the point where I couldn't just give the amount of money they were asking for. It seemed like a hackjob and I didn't want them with their hands in my face when they got that part so horribly wrong.
So now I don't know what to do and am seeking guidance. Help please. =)
And told yea....totally book worthy.
I see my cleft as part of who I am. Sometimes I worry that I spend too much time focusing on it and should instead just focus on living my life. However, it sounds like this is exactly what you did, and now the issue is something you need to get past (again) one way or the other.
Anyway... although I see it as part of who I am, it's not something that defines me. If I were an entry in an encyclopedia, sure, it would be part of the definition, but I have the power to define how I respond to my cleft. And how I respond to how others respond to it. It doesn't mean it's easy, but life's just not always like that. We all have to make our choices and live with them. I see my cleft itself as a symbol and a symptom of this, the human condition. No matter how pretty someone is, they're going to die and decay someday. Vanity is basically a denial of all that. All beauty is fleeting and flawed, yet you can still admit the truth of impermanence and be happy. I don't know if beauty is completely in the eye of the beholder, but I know that comparison with others and obsession with ideals is distortion of perception and a waste and misunderstanding of the gift of life.
Sucks that you had to come to this awareness through a soured relationship. Might I suggest art or some other form of self-expression or new hobby? (making a collage with song lyrics helped me once...) Sometimes a sandbox of new experiences can help you get to the next step in life. Best of luck with it.
http://www.cleftline.org/
I married my high school sweetheart and we are since divorced (4 years) I can see where you are coming from relating issues to your cleft. In my situation when everything ended (after the after math lol) he told me that he stopped seeing it a long time ago and although I am a highly skeptical person, I believed it. :) Since him I have been with other men, but I can't seem to find anyone that I feel close to like I did him
I am so sorry to hear about your teeth. Stay strong and do whatever you need to do to fix them. We are lucky enough to live in a country with so many resources and great doctors there is not reason why you can't get them fixed.
Good luck, stay strong, and big hugs :)