After an 8 hour wait during the day, my blood pressure was checked and consultations with my surgeon and his team to tie up any lose ends I or they may have were done. My operation finally commenced. It was a 3 hour operation, and a massive success.
Post operation I slept a lot, and felt very swollen. I was given a lot of painkillers during this period to cope with the pain; I couldn't speak, and was given antibiotics to deal with the swelling and to avoid infections. My nose was heavily bleeding, my mouth would fill up with blood and often I would be spitting blood out, and as for food my diet from this point on would be a liquid diet. I was eventually discharged from hospital a day later following a post op assessment:
As you can see I look battered, but my spirits remained high for the first few days because I was happy that the ball had finally moved for me. The pain of waiting four years was probably much worse then the physical pain I had been enduring at this point.
There was extensive swelling around my nose, and my upper jaw region, smiling was hard, and I was put onto a diet of mashed potatoes, soup and other mashed food. The swelling finally subsided after a week despite looking absolutely perplexed:
However to measure how wide my upper jaw was becoming, a gap forming in my front two teeth was used as a benchmark:
The gap here was 1mm (click on the image to enlarge). You can tell that my nose is still pretty swollen, this eventually subsided (Note: I am unable to smile as it is painful):
After a week and a half of twisting my SARPE brace:
My jaw at this point has been widened by 2mm. Smiling unfortunantly was still painful by this point, or any rigourous mouth movement for that matter. Weight loss had fully gone under way by his point, a diet of potatoes was not cutting it. I noticed the loss of weight on my neck, and face. (see my latest post) Also throughout (and even now), physically I felt very tired if doing anything for long periods of time, and the jaw pains made sleeping, eating very difficult.
The jaw here has been expanded by 5mm, after twisting the brace 3 times a day with the key shown in an earlier blog entry. This means that my upper jaw has been expanded by 5 mm.
UPDATE:
This is currently my upper jaw after 6mm expansion (as signified by the gap), you can see now that there is a perfect curve forming in my upper jaw, and my smile is now starting to look like a proper smile minus the gap, the stupid face and the teeth not touching. Amazing progression from this - where you can see my top teeth were inwards:
Ha. Special mention goes to my EVIL big sister for pointing this out - rock and roll!
A note to others having this done:
1) Brushing your teeth is an absolute nightmare as your top jaw is very sensitive. Often food would get trapped in my brace brackets, resulting in me doing an half arsed effort with my brush because of the pain; meaning that the food will remain stuck. Eventually, you'll have to push through the pain barrier in order to get over this. Otherwise you'll risk an infection or plaque build up.
2) Often you will spit blood out.
3) I have lost 14 pounds of body-weight and it is showing on my face and my body considerably. Living on a diet of liquids takes it tole.
4) Tiredness and fatigue is constantly in the background. Simple tasks such as playing computer games is hard work. So do not challenge anyone for money in a comp game! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! :D
5) Nights are restless due to the pain. Face goes through periods of swelling during the night as you rest your top jaw on the pillow. You will generally feel like shit.
6) The boredom hits you hard after a while, psychologically and this is an age dependent thing, but at 23 it does kill me from time to time that I am not out there with my friends partying, rather I am housebound due to this. So it should come to no suprise if you start self pitying yourself sulking about why you and not your buddies are having this done!
Note: As a word of advise, if you ever feel like this, try and:
a) Visualise the end result. It is important to remember why you have put yourself through this in the first place, as it will remind you of the bigger picture!
b) Use this as a learning experience to mature you mentally; afterall what you are undergoing here is a hardcore life changing experience (one that many will not experience or be able to relate with) and lastly:
c) Spend time with those closest to you and talk to them about it. People that you can trust and care about you. I strongly advise NOT getting this procedure done if you are living alone without a support structure surrounding you; no man is an Island.
7) Check-ups are done weekly with your orthodontist. You are unable to work out as it may increase blood pressure in case you are wondering, which can interfare with the healing process. Actually there is no healing done at the moment because my upper jaw is still being expanded. The jaw will heal once expansion has stopped. So I will approximently say it will take a good 2 months before you are anywhere near healing considerably.
8) The soreness will not subside until expansion has stopped and the real healing process has begun.
9) Travelling anywhere is a NO NO, I had plans to travel to Dubai and then France but it is in tatters at the moment.
10) The gap will close with the upper jaw healing process. When you widen your upper jaw a massive gap in the middle where the initial surgical incision that was done to split your upper jaw becomes wider. During the healing process, a blood clot is formed there, and the cells within your blood form new bone to fill the void left by the incision(and expansion). As this happens, fibers in your upper jaw causes your teeth to realign themselves naturally closing the gap like magic!
11) You wont be able to smile and forget about being able to kiss anyone! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment