nvcarissa's 4 week update - Elastics, therapy, numbness

[nvcarissa]

Well, actually it's four weeks and change, but I saw my OS yesterday. As I suspected, two more weeks of no chew and then I can go to soft food. My "reward" for going to soft food will also be to start my therapy.

I told my OS about this board and the support we all gave each other as well the handball and the racqetball that Teigyr (? correct me if it is someone else) is using for therapy. He told me that my tools will be much higher tech than that. Then he had the tech come in to explain my therapy...and she walks in with a TENNIS BALL!!! Oh ho ho! Funny! Not. Actually, we all had a good laugh about it. My actual therapy tools are two wooden clothes pins. I am supposed to measure my range pre-exercise, warm my jaws for ten minutes, then open my mouth as wide as I can, and then, holding the clothes pins in as I would to put clothes on a line, slide them between my molars on each side. Then I am to open them until the tops and bottoms rest on my upper and lower molars. And THEN, I am to try to open them a bit more. The tech did this in the office. OW! OW! OW! And she told me that she was barely applying any pressure. This is going to be fun...

My other "high tech" therapy device is a tongue depressor that I am to hold between my front teeth and then slide my jaw sideways, forward and backward. The tongue depressor is to keep my jaw level while doing this exercise.

I have been told that I can stop wearing my elastics all day, that is, I can take breaks of a few hours a couple times a day, and then ease off to night wear only when I go to soft food and therapy in two weeks.

I see him again in four weeks and that is also when I see my ortho again. The OS says that at my next appointment with my ortho I am officially back in his hands. I will also be officially elastics free (from the surgery) in four weeks. Don't know what my ortho has in mind.

I am a bit concerned this morning...I think I might have slept funny but it seems like I woke up with a more swollen jaw than usual and had increased the numbness on my left side.

Has anyone else had this experience? It seems to be fading now that I have been up for about an hour, and drinking hot coffee. Do you think I should go back to sleeping with extra pillows? I even noticed last night that I was having trouble getting comfortable on my side, laying on my back felt stressful on my jaw too, so I finally stayed on my back and tried to rest my cheek against the pillow. But...I woke up this morning feeling that I had taken a step backward.

[nvcarissa]

Regarding swelling, I found this article (pdf) that talks about using lasers to measure 3-D post-op orthognathic swelling and it does indicate that the bulk of the swelling goes down within a month, but even then, there can be 16-20% of swelling remaining. Referring to one of the subjects in the study:

The improvements in facial swelling were recorded as 17.15%, 70.51% and 81.54% after one week, one month and three months respectively. The greatest reduction occured withing the first month following orthognathic surgery.

From the abstract:

Results - The results showed that swelling could be accurately quantified following surgery. Furthermore, there was a significant reduction in swelling 1 month postoperatively. Futhermore, the facial morphology returned to approximately 90% of the baseline facial scan at three months.

I am feeling a bit better after reading this.

[Teigyr]

nvcarissa,

Oh that is too funny about the tennis ball! Oddly enough, my fiance was asking what I wanted for my birthday (it's next week, he has procrastinated in buying things for me apparently) and then said if I didn't tell him, he'd get me a tennis ball to replace the raquetball. The first thing I thought of (after the size) was "eeeek, fuzzy hairy things stuck in my braces".

Also, oddly enough, I am more numb today. I notice it gets worse (as does the swelling) if I am tired. It goes down during the day. My OS said that it can take months and months for all the swelling to go down. I know it seems like the surgery was so long ago but really it wasn't....there is still a lot going on under the surface.

Your therapy sounds very ouch! It gets easier if you keep up on it. I am bad about that. I'll check around to see if I have clothes pins, I might try your way of doing things.

Congrats on your progress though!!! That is exciting!

[smile2006]

Haaa, I too got a got laugh at the thought of trying to get a tennis ball in my mouth (especially right now when my victory was getting my baby toothbrush to my back teeth this morning). Goodness. I didn't realize there was theraphy of that sort yet to come. I'm curious, have you seen your ortho at all since your surgery and if so what has he/she done. Mine is seeing me at two week intervals while still basically in the surgeon's hands. I guess he just wants to see how things are progressing. Will see him this Thursday for the first time. Anyway, enjoy the tennis balls. BTW I used to live in NV, I miss the west, dry air and blue sky. I was teaching at UNLV at the time!

[nvcarissa]

Yes, I saw my ortho last Wednesday, but he was not permitted to do any adjustment or work. However, I did get permission from my OS to let them change my ligs (back to magenta!!!)

He can start back to adjusting me at my next appointment on Aug 16th.

We went out and bought four new pillows for the bed. At this point I think it's going to be three for me, one for sweetie, so I can keep my head elevated.

It's been nice to break from my elastics during the day. I wear them for two hours, take them off for two, wear them for two. Right now I am in a longer elastics-free period (four hours...) but that's because pretty soon I will brush, floss and put them on for the night.

But first, a final snack...hmmm, cottage cheese or ice cream???? Actually, I have been having ice cream just about every night...so, believe it or not, I am going for the cottage cheese.