Firstly, I apologize for being long winded. I know I have to give you some detail but I'm not trying to write my autobiography here - sorry. *pics link including ceph at the bottom if you want to judge first, read later*
I am a 34 year old woman from the US. For as long as I can remember, I thought my face was long. And kinda big. A little more like it fit someone who is 5' 10" instead of 5' 6". I always seem to have the biggest face in the group pic, and this is largely attributable to its length. Anywho, my dentists always said I had beautiful teeth growing up. My current dentist raves whenever he sees me saying I could be a tooth model. No one ever recommended any sort of orthodontics (although I elected to have an express round of Invisalign about 4 years ago to preempt some worsening crookedness in my bottom teeth). I was a mouth breather/thumb sucker/teeth grinder in my youth. The teeth grinding persisted well into adulthood until I had my bite balanced a few years back; the mouth breathing does make an appearance from time to time although I have tried to condition myself out of it. I think I probably have a deviated septum because my mom does and our facial anatomy is very similar. Probably some tongue thrust going on... but nothing confirmed yet there.
Aside from the length of the lower half of my face, I'd say what is most bothersome to me aesthetically speaking is #1 - my gummy smile and #2 - all the tension/orange-peeliness/smile lines and such I have on my chin/below my lip/around my jaw. Why can't my mouth just be at rest and look like a "normal" person's instead of all rumpled, dimpled and rippled up? (Having been an acne sufferer for 17 years doesn't help but I'm always doing what I can about that). Perioral mounds, what?? Even in people with receded jaws, I most often see a ~45 degree-sloping drop off under a protruding lip versus these perioral pockets I have. Moreover, I can never seem to find a good resting spot for my lower jaw. It just never feels totally right and I always feel some level of lip incompetence. I do have a little bit of an open bite up front, which you can see in my ceph... it's more of an annoyance than anything since I can never fully bite through stuff like sandwiches...pizza...spaghetti...etc., etc. I often have to manually tear off whatever food item I can't chew through like I'm ripping a piece of saran wrap off the roll.
As far as any other functional issues go, I don't really know. I have no jaw pain so I guess that rules out TMJ. I feel like I have much more mobility in my facial muscles and a much wider yawn than most people I know. I seem to have the version of the double jointed jaw although I don't have Steven Tyler level wideness. I can make some reeeeeally interesting faces, and not because I necessarily mean to.
I think it is pretty clear I have some VME. I did go to Dr. Jamali in NYC for a consult, and he was very personable but he acted like my issue was....well, not much of an issue at all. Some excess but didn't seem too concerned. Granted I am sure he sees much worse and I apparently don't have much in the way of the traditional dental malocclusion that accompanies some of my other symptoms, but still. He did ask me if I have sleep apnea because my airway looks small. I don't know... I've never been tested for it and none of my past SOs have ever commented on excessive snoring. I would however say on the whole I have sleep issues and am often tired, so it could most definitely be the case.
I've made a couple feeble posts on realself but didn't get anything or anything substantial back in response. Then I stumble upon this forum and I am overwhelmed by the knowledge of the folks here. So might as well just share my pics and see what comes in. I am not knowledgeable enough to know about CCW/CW rotations and some of the finer points of orthognathic surgery that may apply to me, but Jamali did say if I were do to anything it should be a Lefort (I assume he meant Lefort I considering his mild response to my concerns). He said he liked my chin and didn't really want to touch it...then towards the end of the consult he waffled a little with some sliding genio. He did say that the new placement of my lower jaw resulting from the Lefort should reduce the muscle tension and perioral mound issues that I find bothersome. And of course greatly reduce the gummy smile.
Here's the link to my pics:
https://goo.gl/photos/qgGZXyb4Mo8S9sEU9I will take this down after I get a bit of a conversation going. I appreciate your thoughts on what you would do if you were me/what you think about surgery. I think there is a pretty obvious skeletal issue here but maybe I'm just crazy.
PS Most of these are from 2015 taken with a pro camera and most definitely *highlight* my areas of concern...except the iphone screen shot with the bangs, that's from a few weeks ago. The hot blonde is just #lowerhalffacegoals, for your reference.