Jill Duggar Dillard’s Photo Of Derick Dillard Concerns Fans: Why Does His Face Look So Different?
Jill Duggar Dillard just wanted to let her fans know how much she loves her husband when she shared a photo of Derick Dillard on Instagram, but Jill’s post didn’t elicit the response from fans that she was probably hoping for. Instead of praising Jill and Derick’s relationship and gushing about their storybook reality TV romance, fans quickly flooded the post with comments about the way Derick looks.
According to SheKnows, Jill Duggar decided to bid farewell to the roller coaster of a year that was 2015 by celebrating her love for her husband. Jill’s final Instagram post of last year shows her standing cheek-to-forehead with Derick Dillard, and it bears a simple but sweet caption that reads, “I [heart] my hubby.”
Jill Duggar’s Instagram posts usually generate a few hundred comments, but there are over a thousand responses to the photo above. Many of the comments are about how different Derick is looking these days, and they aren’t positive. Some commenters believe that Derick looks “malnourished” and “ill,” and others are complaining because he has allowed his facial hair to grow out.
“He needs to learn how to shave,” one commenter wrote.
“He looks anorexic,” another commented. “His face is gaunt and his eyes are sunk in. Compare wedding day photos with this photo. Definitely something wrong.”
Other commenters shared their concerns about Derick’s face looking lopsided in the Jill & Jessa: Counting On specials that recently aired on TLC.
“Did he have a stroke or something?” one of Jill Duggar’s Instagram followers wrote. “Even on their 3 episode special he had some weird stuff going on with his face.”
Jill Duggar’s followers even began playing internet doctor by trying to diagnose Derick, and they listed a plethora of different health problems that Derick may be suffering from. Suggestions included parasitic infections, diabetes, and neurological issues. Others argued that Derick looks so thin because he’s been fasting for religious reasons.
However, Derick Dillard’s weight loss could be related to the same procedure that drastically changed the way his face looks. According to People, he decided to have major mouth surgery around the same time Jill Duggar gave birth to their first child. As anyone who watched a lot of 19 Kids and Counting knows, the Duggars are very fixated on teeth, and it looks like their obsession with having perfect pearly whites rubbed off on Derick. Back in April, Jill’s husband underwent the painful-sounding process of having his palate expanded before having porcelain braces put on his teeth.
In addition to being fitted with a special “orthopedic expanding appliance,” Derick Dillard had to have few bones fractured and cut. The Advanced Aesthetic Center for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery has a pretty gruesome description of surgically assisted rapid palatal expansion (S.A.R.P.E.).
“The patient has the upper jaw surgically fractured using specialized instruments to perform multiple bone cuts in specific locations that will separate the patient’s upper jaw into movable bone segments to symmetrically expand the arch once the expander is activated.”
Patients are put on a diet of soft food after surgery, so perhaps Derick Dillard lost a little weight during that time. While recovering from his surgery, he also had to deal with the added stress of taking care of a new baby. Things got even more stressful for Derick a few weeks later when he was preparing for a mission trip while helping Jill Duggar deal with the fallout from her brother’s sexual molestation scandal. All of this could have had an effect on Derick’s eating habits, and they changed drastically again when he moved to Central America. Derick has always been a thin guy, so any weight he loses will be very noticeable.
It’s possible that Jill Duggar’s husband might be regretting his decision to undergo all that dental work before leaving for Central America. In a November 23 mission trip update, Jill Duggar revealed that she and Derick had to spend some of their valuable time searching for a dentist who could “fix an orthodontic piece that broke off.” There’s no word on whether Jill and Derick are using part of their mission trip donations to pay for Derick’s dental work.
Do you think Jill Duggar’s husband looks drastically different now, or are the changes in Derick Dillard’s face and weight more subtle than some fans are making them out to be?
[Image via TLC]
