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In reply to the discussion: For guys, Have you ever cut your lip shaving? [View all]pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)The round blew away half my teeth and jaw, exited my neck, and blew a hole in my shoulder. Pieces of teeth and bone became secondary shrapnel that peppered the left side of my body along with the bullet fragments.
Besides a lot of intraoral operations (like one to lower the floor of my mouth) the big one was reconstructing my left mandible using bone tissue from my thigh. When that bone graft failed 7 years later, the Navy (at NNMC Bethesda) tried replacing it with one of my ribs. That would have worked, but because of the amount of scar tissue there there wasn't a good enough blood supply to deliver meds to kill the normal post-op infections.
The failed rib graft was removed over a period of months during which pieces of the rib were removed by prying them off with forceps intraorally in weekly appointments. A painful process with no anesthetic.
The final op took pieces of bone from my other hip to reconstruct my jaw. And a muscle from my chest was cut and re-routed up to my jaw to improve the blood supply.
Throughout the ordeal, I had the best medical care one could hope for. Unfortunately, both the Army and Navy lead surgeons I had are gone. R.I.P. Dr. Osbon and Dr. Mainus.