Tyler Wright called the surgery “life-changing.” Photo: World Surf League
Tyler Wright did something pretty radical during her offseason. She underwent a surgery that saw seven screws installed into her head in an attempt to allow her to breathe better.
Wright, who has two world-titles under her belt, has had a bit of a rough go in the last few years. Back in 2018, she came down with what at first appeared to be a plain old flu. But for the next 14 months, she was in terrible shape as she battled some sort of post-viral syndrome.
When she returned, she looked to be in peak form, but all was not well — not from any kind of recovery, but because of the size of her airways.
“I’ve had a fair few doctors and specialists tell me they don’t know how I do what I do,” Wright said. “I shouldn’t be able to do what I do, according to my brain scans and my anatomy. It’s really unusual that I am a professional surfer. Through one of the specialists we ended up finding that most of the time I’m under-oxygenated, and I’m semi-suffocating all the time through my nose, and my airways are really small.”
Her solution? Go under the knife to make more room to breathe. “So through the off-season I got a maxillary palatal expander in,” Wright explained. “Essentially I’ve got seven screws in my head, between nine and 17 millimeters, and in the off-season I expanded it. Essentially it popped the bone and I got seven millimeters [of extra airway space] through that.”
The device implanted in her mouth is a relatively simple thing. In short, it makes the roof of the mouth wider, as the name implies, but it’s not only used to get more oxygen in the body.
“A palatal expander gently widens the roof of the mouth (palate) over time by separating bones that don’t permanently fuse together until puberty,” Meyers Orthodontics explained. “It’s most often used to create more room for crowded teeth, but the expansion can also increase airflow.”
For Wright, the operation has done wonders, but she’s not at the end of the recovery road just yet. “It’s been really successful and it’s changing my life,” she said. “But it’s also a process and I’m only [on] step one and a half of a multi-step process… I’m healing my nervous system through getting better recovery and better sleep. I’m sleeping for the first time in 15 years, I feel different going out and competing this season.”
