my journey,frustrating and depressing

[ORTHO12]

I would say the surgery and the associated pain when healing is is not bad at all.

The thing that makes things seem very extreme is after care in alot of cases, when obviously you as the patient are feeling/noticing things that to you seem very extreme, unusual or uncomfortable and the surgeon kind of downplays it/disregards it or acts like you are exaggerating.

Sometimes I think because surgeons do this day in day out they forget that we only do it once so whereas they may have 100 people complaining of pain or some unusual sensation post op, they need to realise that each patient is an individual and they need to address the 100 people individually to settle their nerves or resolve the situation.

For instance last week I had the worst ear pain ever like someone was stabbing me in my ear, bearing in mind I am 5months post op and havent had any infection or pain complications this sudden onset of earache took me by surprise so I went to see the surgeon and his answer was "this happens to women when they stress, come back in 6 weeks if it is still happening"...now that type of response is not re-assuring it make me stress more especially knowing he never looked in my ear or nothing so how he know what's going on...and 6 weeks with an ear stabbing pain is not easy to get through and I started worrying even more about how I will survive 6 weeks of that. Anyway that was a Fri evening, Fri night it got 10 times worse, had no hole in the back of my throat, could not swallow or chew anymore, left side of face in pain could not sleep becasue ear stabbing. Went Docs on the Monday, turned out I had a throat infection, took antibiotics and it went in 4days.

What I am trying to say is though, that whole weekend I am thinking the Jaw surgery has caused me this problem, and thinking there something wrong with my jaw and it turned out it was not, but the surgeons response made it even worse and had he just took the time to look and eliminate a Jaw joint problem maybe it would have eased my mind a bit.

Hope this all makes sense.

I just think some surgeons...not all, need to give their patients a little more close up attention and sympathy post op.

[candycin]

so the OS took an xray and thankfully everything is where it is suppose to be so that was a good thing
my open bite is closing so that is also good
we then talked about all this pain....he then asked me where i felt numb still...i said NO WHERE he was totally shocked he said you have feeling everywhere in your face no numbness? i saidfor about 2 weeks now i have had no numbness,,,,he then told me normally numbness can take up to 6 months and that with people over 30 ( iam 35) it can take a year!!! he called the chief OS surgeon and they were both amazed that i had all the feeling back so fast after surgery
so then told me that the pain i am having is the nerves are going crazy trying to re knit and it is causing me pain....so as frustrating as the pain is this is all good!!!! tell me that when i am trying to sleep in agony
he put me on a nerve pill called Carbamazepine to help the nerve pain
lets just hope and pray that it works

[ORTHO12]

Glad you finally got something to smile about Hope the pain eases but at least things are not as bad as you were thinking and that all the negative sides of what you are feeling from healing are positive in terms of healing

[mwp921]

I had some really weird things happen for the first 3-4 months after my lower jaw advancement surgery. One thing was that I had unbelievable muscle spasms that I didn't think would ever settle down. Mine weren't just in my jaw area but consumed the entire inside of my head. Scared me to death! But I can honestly say that at a little over 5 months post-op now, it's only a memory!

[candycin]

mine have thankfully settled down with meds but they were very intense and painful and would keep me up all night.,.,.now i have some achy pain that i get at night only on the right side, perhaps i am grinding my teeth
i am able to open my mouth a bit again and am feeling better again...so heres hoping that is a memory for me as well