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Terra's Story
Hi, my name's Terra, I'm a little younger than most of you here it seems at 20 years old. I have one younger brother. I live in northern Manitoba currently but all of my operations took place in Calgary, Alberta (I think I'm one of the only Canadians!) I have a unilateral cleft lip and was born with a small hole in my palate. I had my first operation when I was 5 months old it was basically just a patch job, I hate looking at the pictures of myself when I was little. I had my second operation when I was 10 a bone graft was taken from my left hip to be placed in my palate. Unfortunately my two front teeth never did grow in. I had braces from 12 to 14 and then I had a retainer with two false teeth in it which I wore till I was 19 and had a partial made to replace the retainer. My last operation was when I was 14 and it is the one I remember the most, it was so painful I cried for days but it looks much better than it did before. My life was pretty hard when I was little I lived in a very small town and being the only kid with a cleft lip as well as the only red head was reason for me to be teased to bits. Junior high was much the same as well as high school, I had a few friends but no dates or boyfriends until I moved to college. Like many of you I had to go to speech and hearing therapists until I was about 7 or 8. I graduated from college last year with a diploma in broadcasting and currently work as an announcer (yay for speech therapy) I found this page just by idle wandering and I have to say I'm very glad I did. The Widesmiles people are doing a great job. Keep it up :)