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Kylie's Story
Dear Wide Smiles, I have been tossing up for a while whether or not to write to your page or not, but here goes anyway! I'm now 26 years old and have finished all my surgeries and orthodontics etc etc , but I still feel that I was really misunderstood by the medical profession on the whole.I suppose this isn't a new thing to be misunderstood by them, but it concerns me that I see it happening over and over again with other people and that things don't seem to change. I found that some of the doctors I dealt with had no idea of what I was going through as a patient, and for all my surgeries to go on for so long - for 25 years, for crying out loud!! They just seemed to see me as a patient and a cleft and not a person behind the cleft. I don't really want to dwell on the past as I know that I can't change this at all, but I suppose I want to know how to change this, or if indeed it is possible for us as patients to change this anyway. I don't think that it is understood that there are psychological effects of having a cleft and the fact that yes, surgery may have changed how we look physically, but that there are still emotional and psychological scars that remain and that aren't cleared away by surgery. I'm also really tired of professionals seeing themselves as better than patients. Well, I don't know how articulate this is, or whether I will come across as being completely paranoid, but I'm thankful for the opportunity to vent my opinions.
Kylie
email: tntkaeadams@tsnxt.co.uk