Katherine Sedovic willingly had her jaw broken. Her parents paid for it.
Sedovic, senior, had her jaw reset at age 16. Normally, jaw problems can be fixed with braces, but her underbite was so severe that braces didn’t work.
“I had braces three different times. I had them second through third grade and sixth through seventh but they just weren’t good enough,” Sedovic said. “I got them back on my sophomore year, had them on for the surgery and got them off this past summer.”
The surgery took place at Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, lasted five hours and cost about $54,000. Insurance covered the majority of the expenses and her parents paid for the remaining amount.
“Basically, they break your jaw, move it and put it back together with screws and things that eventually dissolve,” Sedovic said. “Your mouth is then rubber banded shut for about two days.”
Sedovic stayed at the hospital for five days after the surgery where she was on painkillers, but the total recovery lasted about two months.
“I was moving around after two weeks, but I had to ease back into eating things that weren’t liquids or really soft foods,” Sedovic said. “Also, the painkillers I was on made me nauseous, so I stopped taking them and just took ibuprofen after a while.”
The surgery, however, not only affected Sedovic’s mouth, but it affected her dancing as well. She has taken ballet for 10 years and because of the lengthy recovery, she was forced to take a break.
“I couldn’t dance for at least a month because I lost a lot of weight and was too weak to exercise,” Sedovic said. “Plus, I wasn’t really allowed to exercise for a while anyway because it could have hurt my jaw.”
In the long run, Sedovic sees the jaw surgery as beneficial, even though the process caused her a lot of pain.
“I was really nervous at first because it was such a big deal,” Sedovic said. “They gave me medicine before I was put to sleep to calm me down, so that helped. But I’m definitely glad I did it. It was worth it in the end.”