After Suffering Brutal Bullying, 20-Year-Old with 'Witch' Chin Has Incredible Transformation
Meet 20-year-old Lauren Whitt, a Colorado woman who endured a lifetime of harassment and bullying because of the way her face looked. But now, Whitt is giving her pain a purpose as she shares her intimate story with the world in hopes someone else who is suffering may find hope.
Born with a severe jaw deformity, Whitt struggled not just with her physical appearance but suffered debilitating facial pain every day. At school, kids called her “ugly,” hatefully pointing out the similarities between Whitt’s jawline and the wicked witch of the west.
As the bullying intensified, Whitt switched schools, hoping for a fresh start. But students were just as cruel, so the fed-up teenager finished her final two years of high school online.
Whitt decided to pass on having jaw surgery when she was 12 because she thought she would handle the trauma of surgery better as an adult.
As the years passed, Whitt’s daily suffering became unbearable, and in 2017, she decided her time for surgery had come.
“I hadn’t been able to bite into anything properly since I was a kid,” Whitt explained. “I felt constant pain in my jaw every single day.”
“I had a lot of trouble breathing and it kept getting worse,” she continued. “It got to the point that I couldn’t breathe without my mouth being open.”
Whitt’s preparation for surgery was painful and complicated, and the surgery itself was very intense. Her facial surgeon deemed Whitt’s procedure “one of the most complicated surgeries of his career.”
Whitt had double-jaw surgery, meaning both her upper and lower jaw had to be broken, shifted, and held together with a myriad of plates, pins, and stitches. Her recovery was brutal, fraught with additional unexpected surgeries, infections, and difficult pain management.
But through the pain, Whitt found something she hadn’t felt in her entire life: freedom. The freedom to breathe through her nose, the freedom to speak without a lisp.
She has found the freedom of taking a bite of food with a properly-aligned jaw. The freedom to break away from her years of insecurity, and tell others that there is hope, despite the pain.
“It’s been my most awful and most rewarding experience so far,” the 20-year-old expressed. “Anyone considering this surgery should do it because it can change your life.”
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