Julia Bixler-Chavez, right, and her mom, Shayla Bixler, share a moment together May 9 at Fichtner-Mainwaring Park in Medford. 

Julia Bixler-Chavez is eagerly

awaiting the day she can have a

normal bite of food.

“As stupid as it sounds, I just want so badly to bite into a cheeseburger. A caramel apple, anything,” said the 16-year-old.

Her black hair reaches to her waist. On her feet, sequined heeled boots reflect the sun even better than her braces, carefully colored blue and red because “blue and red make purple.” The Phoenix High School sophomore was born with a number of health problems, but the most punishing is micrognathia, a condition that makes the lower jaw smaller than normal.

Her lower jaw has been progressively moving inward throughout her life, creating a domino effect for her health.

Her mother, Shayla Bixler, is wrestling with Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and the family’s insurance company to prove jaw surgery is medically necessary and get coverage for the procedure. The teen has been dreaming about how it would change her life.

“Breathing would be so much easier. It’s pushing off my airways as time goes on. Eating. I only have two teeth in the very back of my mouth that touch,” she said.

Opening her mouth to demonstrate its limitations, she could only fit two fingers up to the first knuckle between her jaws.

“We have to cut up or break up all of her food into tiny pieces for her to eat. Don’t get me wrong, the girl can eat, but she eats slowly,” Bixler said.

At the moment, insurance is not covering the cost. The family was informed this week the cost of the procedure will drop from an original estimate of $60,000 to nearly $40,000.

The family has a GoFundMe campaign started by friends and co-workers of Bixler. The first surgery is scheduled for Thursday, May 18.

“I was quite reluctant about the GoFundMe, but I have to tell you, it’s given us the opportunity to breathe a little bit. No matter what, I will fight to the death to get this approved through insurance,” she said.

If the family manages to raise more money than they need, she said, they have decided to donate the excess to a charity close to Bixler-Chavez’s heart — Mercy Flights.

The teenager became part of the nonprofit’s Explorers program last year after one of her teachers collapsed during class.

“He was having a stroke, and it was during COVID. No one else was jumping up to help, so I just had to,” she said.

One of Bixler’s co-workers — Michele Bates, who also helped set up the GoFundMe — was an Explorer when she was younger and introduced the family to the program.

Mercy Flights Explorers is an extension of Boy Scouts of America, offering teenagers the opportunity to learn career skills as a first responder, according to the nonprofit’s website. Bixler-Chavez’s time as an Explorer has inspired her dreams for the future.

“I want to get my EMT/paramedic license and be a stewardess. They cannot take off without a medically trained person on board. Why not? Travel the world,” she said.

The Explorer program has invited her to help serve as paramedic for 4,000 Scouts at the Boy Scouts National Jamboree this year, and she hopes she will be recovered from her surgery in time. Her mother is anxious to see that recovery, no matter what it takes.

“I’ve told them, ‘I’m not putting down the phone. I’m a hound dog now,’” Bixler said of her struggle with the hospital and the insurance company.

Bixler-Chavez was born with vitiligo and hydrocephalus, an excess of fluid on her brain. The shunt installed to help drain this fluid causes complex partial-seizures, which are controlled, Bixler said. The 16-year-old also has scoliosis. To combat that, she does weight training four days a week. She also struggles with some auto-immune issues. She is on her third round of braces, a series of orthodontic treatments that began when she was 8 years old.

She stares back at the world with a graceful determination evident in her brown eyes. When people don’t understand her condition, she simply explains it, she said. She feels no insecurity. She refuses limitations.

“Why hide when you don’t need to? I figure why do that to yourself when you could just live, instead of being scared of everything,” she said.

Her mother looked down at the ground and said she had to add one caveat — her daughter does hide her own suffering.

“She lives this bright, lovely life and hides so much from the world, which is OK. I respect that. She does such a good job of hiding where she’s at, no one would know what she has to go through — the nights she can’t sleep because she’s up with endless bloody noses and can’t breath,” Bixler said.

Because her jaws can’t properly close, the teen’s mouth and nose can dry out at night to the point of nosebleeds.

“Why show pity for yourself when you could be the one to show people the way?” the teenager said.

She quietly admitted she was a little scared about the surgery. And she does hope there is enough money raised for her to “just eat so much” after she’s recovered. She estimated she has not bitten into anything normally since she was 5 years old.

She polled her friends online asking whether she will look more like her mother or her father after the procedure — so far the results are 50/50 — and she created an Instagram page to document her journey to a new life #journeywithjulia2023.

To donate to the family’s GoFundMe campaign, see www.gofundme.com/f/support-julias-facial-reconstruction-journey As of Saturday at noon, it had raised $10,960 toward a $50,000 goal.