My name is Tara Bunnenberg.

I am 20 years old.

I am Imperfectly Perfect.

I have been through many struggles in my life. All my struggles have taught me that life is a journey, not a destination. You have to go through the hard times, to get to where you want to be. I was born with cleft lip, which is a fissure or an opening that forms before birth. Unfortunately not just your lip is affected, but other parts of your face as well, such as your eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, and forehead by being unaligned with each other. Cleft lip causes problems with feeding, can lead to ear disease, or can cause many speech problems. Luckily, cleft lip can be repaired by surgery.

For the first three months of my life it was very difficult to eat, since I had a hole in my lip. The hole made breast feeding impossible, which affected my weight, but it didn’t end there. As I grew up, I had many problems with my ears and always had to go to an ear doctor to have special tests done. When I was in high school, professionals came to the conclusion that my birth defect had contributed to my ability to read slower than others, or learn information as fast. My cleft lip has affected me my entire life. When I was three months old, I had undergone an operation to close the hole in my lip. My family was very grateful to have found such a great surgeon to do the surgery. After getting through that surgery, we thought the hardship was over. We thought all the surgeries and pain were over with but unfortunately they weren't.

When I was eight years old, my nose began to collapse. I went back to my surgeon who referred me to a maxillofacial surgeon. He than told me I need another surgery because I was missing a bone right under my nose. In order to fix this, they had to take a bone from my chin and replace it in my nose. The oral Maxiofacial surgeon, Dr.Sachs and his assistant, Dr.Schwartz, worked with Dr.Gallagher, my surgeon from birth, to fix my collapsing nose. At the time, I remember thinking that this was the worst surgery ever. I came out of the surgery screaming that there were spiders all over me and I felt itchy. The doctors told me that I was having an allergic reaction to the anesthesia. I had never felt so much pain in my life! My face was purple and as swollen as a balloon. As I recovered in the hospital, my mother stayed by my side until I was better, but I had to go through the experience without my father. According to him, he couldn’t stand the thought of the swelling, bleeding or bruising. My mom and my Aunt, Jeanne Anderson have stuck with me through every surgery I have had. Without the two of them I would not be here right now because the most recent surgery I had was horrible and even with all my kicking and screaming they loved me and cared for me. My mom and my Aunt are my hero’s and have proved to me that I can get through anything life throws my way, I just need a little help and care from others!

After healing physically from that surgery, the pain mentally started. From forth grade to twelfth grade I was known as, the lip girl. People who didn’t like me at school would yell out in the hall ways “hey look it’s the lip girl.” I remember running into the bathroom and crying hysterically. I didn’t want to be “the lip girl” I wanted to be like everyone else and I was sick of being hurt. The mental pain I endured was almost worse than the physical. I just wanted it to end.

I never thought I would want to have a job that involved people. I always wanted to be a vet because after years of bullying; people scared me. Now, I want to help people who have similar problems as I had. I’m going to school to be a social worker so I can talk to people about their problems, and help them overcome them. After the surgery in forth grade I really thought that was it, especially after all the mental and physical hurt I had endured. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the end of my surgeries.

Just two years ago when I was in twelfth grade I started having trouble breathing from my nose. We went back to my surgeon, who told us that my nose bone had shifted and I had a deviated septum. So that year again I had another surgery. The doctor, Dr. Gallagher, fixed my deviated septum and since my surgeon was also a plastic surgeon she fixed my lip to make it look a little better. This surgery didn’t sound too bad but afterwards, I still felt horrible. Again something went wrong with the anesthesia and my face broke out into some sort of rash. On top of that, I started hearing things, like people talking or footsteps. At this time, I needed my mom a lot because I felt alone and so scared from the psychosis I was experiencing. Since I needed her attention so much, it was hard for her to pay attention to the rest of the family and my step dad decided to give us some time alone so I could get better. This was a really difficult time for me because It was my fault that he left us and I had to watch my mom fall apart after he left. Since it was such a bad time for all of us, my mom suggested I stay with my dad just for a little while she got herself together. In the end, she came out to be even stronger than she has ever been. During the time I was at my dads, she got herself together and I was so happy to be able to come home. When I finally returned home I was so thankful the surgeries were over. 

It is now 2 years after that surgery and I just went through the biggest surgery yet. This time it had nothing to do with my cleft lip. For years I have been saying, “take my picture from the left side because I have 2 faces.” I thought my different faces were due to the cleft lip. The right side of my face was much longer and distorted than the left side of my face, but it has been like that for years. Finally, this year my jaw wasn’t shutting all the way on the right side. I would chew gum constantly and just leave it on the right side, to take up the extra room between my top and bottom jaw. First I went to my orthodontist,Dr. Harry Tsosos, who took x-rays and sent me back to the maxiofacial surgeon. My maxiofacial surgeon told me I have a tumor growing in my jaw joint that needs to come out, or else it will keep growing and will distort my face even more.If it weren’t for my orthodontist, Dr. Harry, I wouldn’t have known about the tumor and it would have just kept growing and growing and eventually it would have distorted my entire face. I am shocked that so many other dentist and doctors missed the tumor because it has been growing for years I was told, and I have had many x-rays within these past few years. I am so thankful for Dr. Harry, he has been a great help to my whole family throughout the years.

I was in shock and so upset that I had to have another surgery because that meant I would need my mom again. The surgery consisted of taking my whole jaw joint out and replacing it with a rib. He also had to cut out some extra bone that grew in the mandible (bottom jaw) and the maxilla (top jaw), than he had to shift my whole jaw to the left to make it even. It was supposed to be an eight hour surgery but it ended up being eleven hours because there was a complication. While going under anesthesia, my blood levels began to alarm the Anesthesiologist. I had Metabolic Acidosis, which is condition that occurs when the body produces too much acid or when the kidneys are not removing enough acid from the body. Its causes are diverse, and its consequences can be serious, including coma and death. The normal blood level for your acid is between 2 and -2 mine was -10. They had not one or two Anesthesiologists, but five, all working to keep me alive. My surgeon said I could have died because of it and the cause could have been from my seizure medications. This got me really upset because I had to stop me seizure meds and I have been petrified since then that I will once again just wake up in my moms arms with tons of medics over me asking me what year it is, and the scariest part was not knowing. This has most definitely been the worst surgery so far, but I know God has been with me through out it all.

After the eleven hour surgery, I thought It was finally over, but my body rejected some of the hardware that was holding the rib in place. This caused one of the incisions to open, leaving me with an open hole on my neck. Every day I had to wear a band-aid and had the stress of it getting infected because it was open. I was embarrassed when I went to school or any where else because I had a band-aid on my neck, but I soon realized this made me stronger. It built my self esteem because I learned that what others think about me shouldn’t matter it’s what I think of me. I am still working on building my self esteem so that I can see I am just as beautiful as anyone else but this has been the start of that journey!

Dr. Schwartz did an amazing job and I can’t thank him enough for putting up with me all of these months! He is an amazing surgeon who truly cares and I know that because when the incision opened he made me come to the office every 3 days for the first month to make sure it was ok and clean it out. Then we progressed to once a week and I was very happy! Then it was once a month and then unfortunately he saw the screws were being rejected. But now everything looks amazing and I can close my jaw on both sides, It’s nice not having to always chew gum to even out the sides!

During the first week of recovery, the pain was so bad that I really thought I wasn’t going to get through it. It was with the help and support from my friends and family that I managed to stay strong. This experience of being in the ICU and almost dying, made me realize that every day is a gift and to live to the fullest because it could be taken away at any moment.I am only 20 years old and yes, I have been through a lot and these surgeries aren’t even half of what I have been through but talking to other people with similar problems has helped me tremendously.

If my struggles in life have taught me anything, its that;
no matter what anyone tells me, I am perfect in my own way.

Imperfectly Perfect is the perfect way to get your feelings out and to help others going through the same things you are, to know that they aren’t alone. I am delighted to have the chance to help others with their problems and the experiences they are going through. I know it will help me feel less alone as well! This nonprofit is so important to me because I love helping people and that is what my career is going to be about.

I want people to know they are not alone. Everyone suffers but you don't have to suffer alone!
I speak for everyone who was born with a Cleft Lip, or anyone who has had surgery, by saying; that we are Imperfectly Perfect.

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