Winnipegger who waited years for jaw surgery able to eat solids again after multiple procedures
CBC
A Winnipegger who spent years on a waitlist for a surgery that was not performed in Manitoba says he's mostly back to normal, and finally able to eat solid foods, after undergoing a final jaw procedure in Saskatchewan two months ago.
Daniel McClelland says it's been a long journey since he first sought treatment for a bone growth that stopped his right jaw joint from functioning properly five years ago.
"I have some screws in my mouth and I'm doing exercises … [to] get my jaw aligned, and the pain is pretty much, like, minor now," McClelland said Wednesday.
"I'm still on a few painkillers, but not like I was."
Winnipeg physicians had used a portion of his rib to replace a jaw joint that had fused to his upper jaw and skull. But that bone also fused to his skull, creating two anchor points that prevented him from fully opening his mouth.
McClelland said he was in constant pain for years, and was unable to eat solid foods.
"I was drinking most of my meals through a straw," he said. "I couldn't get a job. Couldn't go out and do lots of things."
McClelland was referred to an Ontario doctor who specializes in oral surgery in June 2021. But it wasn't until Dr. Christopher Ward, a Saskatchewan-based maxillofacial and oral surgeon, reached out to him following a 2024 CBC story that he was able to get the treatment he needed.
He underwent the first of four surgeries in Regina about two months later. His final surgery was in December.
"I had to keep going back [because of] a really bad bone infection," said McClelland, but if all goes according to plan, he's about three weeks away from being fully healed.
Ward said McClelland's case was probably one of the most difficult he's ever dealt with.
"He initially had bone fusion in a very irregular region," the surgeon said. "Having to go through … a previously operated surgical site [can also] skew anatomy and make it much more difficult to go into a second time."
Only a handful of specialists can perform that kind of procedure in Canada, said Ward, and about 20 per cent of his patients come from Manitoba.
A lack of specialists "creates a scenario where a patient in Manitoba has to come to our clinic to be assessed, to be further worked up and treatment planned, and then be added to our surgical waitlist," he said.
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