so did you preface your consult with your own self-diagnosis before the surgeon gave his response?
you may have figured it out, that's good and a sign of due diligence. i wish i had that kind of fortitude and ambition prior to my surgery. but encouraging that sort of behavior isn't healthy for most people, it just isn't helpful. they come into the consult with the wrong mindset. OP needs a clear diagnosis, he doesn't need to prove anything. it is a serious surgery that will likely carry permanent results. so it's better to get a good handle on the surgeon's POV rather than having your own thoughts validated.
No, I had him diagnose me before I said a peep. I didn't want to influence his evaluation in any way. His evaluation of me needed to be as unbiased as can be.
I think you're wrong about that. If you want as good a result as can possibly be achieved, you need to understand the dynamics of your own face. From what I have seen, the vast majority of surgeons out there are not very much concerned with the aesthetics of jaw surgery, and even those who are get it wrong a lot of the time. Most surgeons seem to strive for accomplishing as much as possible by doing as little as possible and while that is a perfectly fine thing to do (especially seeing the exponentially rising risks associated with "doing more"), it is not good enough for me. By being uneducated, you are essentially putting yourself in the hands of an unknown person whose judgement you can't be too sure about. They might overlook and not correct, or undercorrect, parts simply because THEY do not think it's a big deal, and because it might not be needed to achieve a good bite.
I'm well aware that the great majority of patients out there do not have good knowledge of their own facial structure, but I would personally never do anything like this without being as sure of the impact of the surgery as I can be. There are times at which you do have to blindly put 100% of your trust in the hands of others. This is not one of those times.
