Hi, I'm Karissa. I'm raising money to be able to pay for major jaw surgery. Over the last 6 years, I've been to many dentists. I always asked them about my jaw popping or locking up for a few seconds, and they said it was normal and nothing to worry about. I also asked them about my overbite, and they said it was fine and not a big deal as well.

Flash forward to summer 2020, my TMJ pain started getting increasingly worse fast. By October 2020, my jaw was locked where I couldn't open it more than one finger width wide and was in EXCRUCIATING pain. I called around until I could find a dentist accepting new clients since I lived in a new town. I finally found one in December 2020 after months of no one accepting new clients because of Covid-19. I went in, and they did an X-ray that showed my disc was missing from my jaw joint. They also looked at my teeth and my overbite and told me it was very bad and probably wouldn't be fixed with just braces alone. They then gave me a referral to an oral surgeon at Dartmouth Hitchcock. I gave them a call to set up an appointment, and they told me that they don't deal with jaw surgery at that certain office. I then had to call my dentist back, and they found out that the only oral surgeon that was the closest and specializes in jaw surgery was at Mass General in Boston, MA. After over a month, they got my information put in the system and got me an appointment for the end of February. I've been going since and have had a cone beam scan, MRI, tons of blood work, etc. They said I have an extremely compensated dental occlusion class I with an extreme deep bite. I had arthroscopy on my jaw joint to stabilize my joint and take a closer look at what's going on inside my jaw joint (July 2021), and they found that I had synovial hyperplasia with cell-rich chronic inflammatory infiltrate. My oral surgeon went over the findings with me, then mentioned that my ANA results came back normal, so they sent me back to my rheumatologist to do more testing because it wasn't normal results. My rheumatologist did a bunch of tests and looked at my oral surgeon's notes. I was then diagnosed with undifferentiated inflammatory polyarthritis (rheumatoid arthritis).

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease where your body's immune system attacks your own cells and deteriorates the joints, causing severe pain in the joints and muscles, inflammation, stiffness, weakness, etc. After my arthroscopy, the pain went away for about 2 months and then came back two times worse. I started taking immunosuppressive meds and I will probably have to be on these meds for life. The only time I will be stopping them is before surgery and after until I'm healed enough to be approved to get back on them. The side effects are so awful, and I have hardly any immune system on them, so I have to be super careful not to get sick; even a cold could be very bad for me. My oral surgeon said if I do not move forward with orthognathic surgery (moving my jaw as well as rotating it to get my jaw properly aligned) along with getting braces to fix my bite, it will continue making my jaw issues worse. On top of that, I now also need total joint replacement on both sides of my jaw.

While most of the costs are covered by my insurance, luckily, I still need help moving forward with the workup, which is where they do all the measurements of my whole skull and jaw (facial proportions), profile evaluation, cephalometry (evaluates the proportions of the facial skeleton and compares it to a patient with a normal facial skeleton), model molds, mock surgery and splints, profile prediction, and 3D virtual planning, and measurements for my jaw joint replacements. All those mentioned above are needed to be done to be able to make a customized plan for my jaw personally. As well as help with braces to fix my bite, I've always been okay with my teeth, and if it wasn't necessary for my health, I honestly wouldn't even bother, but unfortunately, it is very necessary. I already have a lot of serious health problems. Between them and this new diagnosis, the last two years have been a living hell. I've been really struggling to already pay my bills; I cannot afford to pay for these things at this time. I hate asking anyone for help or talking about my health or personal problems, but I've now become desperate.

Surgery Date TBH

Final workup Aug 26th - $1,500 - completed

Genioplasty - $8,000

I'm sorry this is so long-winded, but I want to be completely transparent about what the money is for. This is all inclusive to the surgery and not in any way for personal expenses like bills, rent, gas, or anything else. If you’d like to see supporting documents for proof, feel free to message me directly. This surgery can completely change my life; none of this is for aesthetics; it is all medically necessary. If you can help at all, $1 or even just sharing, I'd really appreciate it more than anything.