Week 2 and 3 down! Phew!

Two more weeks down! Week two was difficult for me, but three has been a lot better... Week one, had too much going on from being in the hospital, to getting settled at home, to finding tasty new fluids. I was distracted, and as soon as one thing was finished, it was on to the next one. Week two, the reality started to sink in, time started to move at a snails pace,  and the liquid diet was getting on my nerves. Week three, things starting to look up I felt like I have more energy, swelling is starting to go down, definitely more positive! Granted there is a long long way to go, but this is how I feel thus far.

Day 7/8- After I got back home from the hospital I started having madman dreams, hearing weird voices and visualizing things that were not there (hallucinating). Morphine, I assumed, was the culprit, because it all stopped happening after 2 or 3 days. Everyone has different reactions to morphine, for me it was dizzyness and painful bloating (not side effects I'd commonly heard of).

Day 11/12- Meltdown. My swelling had made no real progress after day 6. I was still an over sized uneven basketball. Something that had been kicked around by every kid on the playground, left in a corner somewhere. I had stayed put. No progress was being made. I hadn't gone out to see anyone, or do anything. I felt isolated and started getting angry with my face, with this liquid diet from hell, with the overwhelming desire to let go of this misery and no one could understand my frustration. I wanted to ditch my face for a few days, have fun, and get back to recovering, but when you're in this- you're in this, and you better know it. After a few hours of crying, and talking to some of the kindest people, I was able to feel a little bit more at ease. Part of it I'm sure was the drug cocktail leaving my body, 7+hours of anesthesia and 2+days of morphine doesn't just vanish. The rest of the madness though, was all me. I knew when I signed up for jaw surgery, it was not going to be a bed of roses, but there are times when you feel cornered and have to let those feelings go. 
When everything goes wrong, it seems there are always certain people 'who get you' and know how to make it better. If you are going through this, make sure you have this person(s) around or on speedial, trust me. Luckily two of my guiding lights, one a former jaw surgery patient who had her surgery almost two years ago (Tresa) and (Terra) knew how to settle my defeated heart. Sometimes you need to get things OUT of your system in order to move past them, this was one of those nights.

Day 13- Feeling much better from last night and started to see that things would get better. I had  to believe it. I had been craving a donut and figured, "Lets try this in the blender!" WOW. It was beyond disgusting. It tasted like eating a block of lard or something. I could barely drink it, and with much guilt poured the rest down the drain, lesson learned, no more blended donuts and would advise anyone against trying this. It turns out that bready or bread-like products get absolutely disgusting once blended.

Around 8 pm I had a headache kick in, and thought oh my pain meds (Tramadol) will take care of it. Not really. I dozed in and out of sleep for awhile till midnight and took a second dose in hopes that it will quiet my headache. At 3:30 am I wake up and try to find my phone charger, I felt dizzy, majorly disoriented, and collapsed on the floor. Suddenly this painful jabbing in my skull becomes overwhelming, and I felt like my head would burst and  I was going to throw up everywhere. After darting to the bathroom I just sat there waiting, hoping, to throw up, but nothing. I just sat there till my mom came to see what was wrong. Luckily I had my Maxalt, and was able to settle down after an hour and get some sleep. I've always had migraines, its nothing that was caused by jaw surgery, but probably dehydration compounded with jaw clenching is creating the perfect recipe for this suffering.

Day 14 Week two follow up-  Apparently my scheduled appointment time got moved or shifted, but got to see a different surgical assistant. So Dr.G was finally back in town and funny enough he ran into my orthodontist at a conference and Philly and they talked about my case, cheese steak  and whatnot, its a relief they work together so well. So I had my elastics cut off and I had spend some time in the mirror opening and closing my mouth...but was unable to get my mouth open large enough to fit the baby tooth brush. I was able to at least brush my outside teeth and watch in amazement to find what disgusting things the brushing would push out. I was told 'do not brush the gums' so my focus now is entirely on the teeth. I was given three specific rubber band formations for my teeth and one internal rubber band formation that I not mess with. Besides that my incisions are healing nicely and I've been given the all clear to have anything I want blended.  It was a relief to know that I am still very swollen and part of the reason is the grafting, and my bottom two wisdom teeth were in the way and he took them out during my surgery. At the end he squished and shaped some of the grafting on my face, and it sounded a bit like rice krispies. 

• My face at this point is covered in milia, so my face is bumpy and gross. I've tried cleaning as much gunk with an oil cleanser *this usually helps dissolve blackheads/whiteheads, and I've made SOME progress but, its working at a snails pace. The two brands I've used are Kose Softymo (w/ mineral oil) and Tatcha (mineral oil free), both work wonderfully.

Day 17- First day that I felt I had a bit more energy and wanted to get out and such. I've also been forcing myself to drink more fluids, so it might have something to do with that as well. 

Day 18- I haven't gone out in public since my surgery, except to follow up appointments and to do small walks in a garden nearby. Figured it was about time for me to get out and see the world since my energy levels were a bit higher and felt my swelling was going down. So I put on some mascara of course haha, and went out for a bit of a walk to see some of the local artwork. Now I had mentally prepared myself that some people might look at me or such, but luckily I didnt get many stares. There was one girl, no joke who was full on staring at my face in disgust. This did make me uncomfortable. Why do people do that ? Anyways besides that everything was good. I even went to this local ice cream joint McConnell's, decent line outside the door, figured I could use some calories and got a few flavors- heads up the salted caramel chip is the best. In my excitement to try something new, thought I'd be able to drink up some of the melted ice cream before I got home- it was an epic mess but well worth it!

Day 19- Since I will be leaving SB soon and haven't seen any of it :(, figured it was time for me to go see the Botanical Garden. Its a bit difficult to navigate as there is some light hiking and such and found myself getting tired 10 minutes in. The Redwood trees and wildflowers in bloom really stood out and were stunning. 


Day 20 Week three follow up- So we get started by taking off my rubber bands and doing stretches. I can barely open my mouth like one fingers width max and it hurts bad. I hope this is normal but I feel my recovery might be going slower than normal. We then did x-rays and photos of my uneven basketball face and bite to have progress photos. When you see the photos for the first time, its a little confusing in thinking all of those screws, plates, etc are lodged up in your skull without harming you. I've tried my hardest thus far to not judge my current face because it looks and feels well different. Dr.G kept saying you have a lot of swelling be patient it will come together. He did this plastic bite thing on each side to see how I was biting down and shaved down some of my brackets- it was not painful but opening my mouth that wide for a bit did. Apparently I had brackets in the way of my bite down and its not a good thing to have. Then the shaping of my HA grafts, rice krispy sounds the whole way through, and now Im craving a bar. 
But overall he seemed pleased with everything. Got my elastic configuration-everything is easy minus one in to out config 6 to 6 on the right side. I leave SB tomorrow and I come back in 3 weeks to make sure my bite is okay and my grafts are right. Hydroxyapatite sets at week 6 and becomes bone-like so I dont want to end up with a permanent humpty dumpty face if I can help it. 


Overall I can say things are getting better or I hope they are.

• Swelling- This is tricky, Im hoping I still have a long way to go it has definitely gone down but no way to estimate how much I have left.
• Pain- 2/10 and over the last few days I will only take pain meds at night because my right jaw joint is tender and mad at me.
• Energy- 5/10 definitely a huge improvement, to be able to take walks longer than 5-10 minutes and not want to nap most of the day.
• Bruising 1/10- I can say most of my bruising is gone, was mostly under my eyes and on my lower jaw area. I still have some bruising under my left eye but thats it

So I've indicated where I have sensation and numbness. The green is complete sensation. The blue is light numbness and tingling. The pink region is more numb than blue. Red is almost completely numb this includes my lower lip but has occasional zings and fizzy bubbley bits. Im trying to not judge numbness at all for another month or two, hopefully everything starts to wake up!

Month 1 with x-rays coming up! Also a huge thank you to everyone who has shown me much love and support, I am so grateful <3