June/July 2015 Surgery Buddies

[Pavlidja]

Hi all,

Im about a year into my braces plus its been a year since my SARPE/SAME surgery and on Friday the 19th I will be having double jaw surgery to correct my overbite.
I have had my molds done and spoken to my surgeon and asked many questions about the procedure..maybe to many. He went into a lot of detail about the surgery itself. I'm not really squeamish but it sounds soo much worse than it is.

Im having my upper jaw moved forward 3mm and my lower jaw moved forward 6-7mm or as much as he can haha. He will also rotate the jaw to help adjust the steep angle of the jaw. Ive opted not to have and the chin genioplasty, if i do i will have it later.

I hate the waiting and im not looking fwd to having both jaws broken but at the same time I want it over with. It all been pretty smooth sailing thus far and hopefully all will go well.

[snapdresser]

Good luck Pavlidja!!! You're coming up quick! Thanks for posting your movements, that's always interesting to hear. What symptoms are they treating? Are they doing a 1-piece LeFort?

[Nozzelnut]

Good luck Pavlidja!!!

Surgical hooks are crimped on, wires are latticed to the brackets (with wire) and I guess I'm ready for this. I still have to call for my exact time tomorrow.

I did talk to my orthodontist about the "segmented" terminology; it means what I thought it would mean. How many pieces? Not sure; guess I'll find out tomorrow. He did mention adding more width and being able to fix my cant better with it being in sections.

Nothing from Kayla yet......

How are you guys doing with the recovery today? More feeling coming back? More movement? Less swelling?

[Nozzelnut]

Scheduled for 2pm tomorrow; be there at 11:45. Something tells me I'm going to be a bit hungry...

I feel lucky that I have a 20 minute drive instead of a few hours like you guys.

[jaime]

Good luck Pavlidja!! Let us know how it goes!!

Nozzelnut, your last night before surgery! Hopefully you can do something enjoyable tonight that will take your mind off surgery (which I admit is a hard feat to accomplish). We'll all be rooting for you tomorrow!!

Doing good today, it's been a pretty uneventful day. Planning to do a blog post and video later when my husband goes to hockey.

Last night we were watching TV and he kept making me laugh. I laughed so hard that I had to pop a Percocet and start repeating sad things aloud to myself (real example: "there's a dead squirrel outside the house, there's a dead squirrel outside the house, dead squirrel, dead squirrel, dead squirrel...") because I couldn't stop laughing!!

Eating and drinking has gotten easier since about yesterday. The swallow to choke ratio is like 15:1 now (as opposed to about 3:1 a few days ago). I've been using cups to drink out of and spoons to eat my soup, like a real live adult. It feels nice being somewhat normal.

The only new thing is my jaw joints were absolutely aching this morning when I woke up. Ibuprofen and a hot compress helped a lot and I've been okay since then.

How are you doing, Snap? Feeling like you're coming out of the woods now, too?

[jaime]

Oh! And here's my x-ray before and after...y'all get an exclusive sneak peek before I put it on the blog.

beforeandafter.jpg

Things of note:
1. You can see my TPA in there, if you're wondering what the extra metal is about
2. My surgeon used two SCREWS to hold my chin in place, not plates.
3. For the Lefort I, he used plates as well as wires threaded through the bone because apparently it gives the jaw some flexibility. Interesting.

[snapdresser]

Nozzelnut- I'd assume it's a 3-piece. Is your maxilla wider than your mandible? Cuz my understanding was that they usually did the 3-piece to match the width of the mandible. Recovery is... Slow on a day-to-day basis it's pretty tough to see any difference unless maybe you're taking pictures. I'm always sad to look in the mirror in the morning and see that it appears to be exactly the same as when I went to sleep (plus some bloody snot dried under my nose ). Movement is tougher now that my surgeon replaced my bands. They get stretched out over time. The feeling in the lips is also coming back slowly. My chin is still virtually completely numb... GOOD LUCK TOMORROW!!!! We'll see you on the other side!!!

Jaime - hahaha "dead squirrel, dead squirrel" Good to hear your eating' gotten much easier. I was concerned about your lack of fluid and food intake. I'm doing fine, but the slow progress in recovery has me feeling like I won't be out of the woods soon lol. Sweet x-Rays! Thanks for the sneak preview!!! Looks great! What's a TPA? Interesting that they did your chin with screws. Did they have a reason for that? Also interesting about the wires on the maxilla. I was unaware they wanted flexibility in it lol

[Nozzelnut]

TPA is a trans-palatal archwire; keeps the upper stable after SARPE or palatal expansion.

Glad y'all are feeling better!

Cool xray Jaime!

[KaylaChristine]

I'm doing okay. Been a rough couple of days. I'm in a lot more pain that I thought I'd be. Surgeon said the surgery went great though. He didn't widen the upper. Moved the upper about 7-7.5 mm forward and the bottom back 5-6 mm. He had to freehand it so those are estimates he gave me today. He moved it a lot more than I was expecting. Said my midlines look good as well.

I'll reply to other posts in a day or so when I feel better. Can't seem to sleep more than hour at a time.

[jaime]

Hang in there, Kayla! Glad to hear the surgery went well. Sorry to hear you're in more pain than expected... I've found this to be not be overly painful so it's crazy it can differ so much from person to person. I guess the good side of that is that you already have some sensation. Maybe you won't have as much numbness.

[snapdresser]

Woooooooo KaylaChristine!!!! You did it!!!! Yaaaay Super Fun Recovery Club!!! You'll start feeling a LOT better in the next day or two. Eating will get easier. Medicating will get easier. Pain will get better. I had a pretty constant aching in my jaws and TMJs that still hasn't fully gone, but they gotta stop the morphine to get out of the hospital If it's any consolation the surgeon said I could go off the Tylenol with Codeine if I'm ready but I haven't totally dropped it yet cuz I'm still getting some pain. You sound a lot like I felt afterwards. Didn't feel like posting. Didn't feel like watching Netflix. Didn't feel like doing anything at all, really. Maybe sleeping. Well you're almost through the tough part! You'll already start seeing those routine tasks getting easier tomorrow Welcome to the Club, KaylaChristine!

[Nozzelnut]

Nice to see you're still with us Kayla!

Take it easy and keep up on the fluids.

[jaime]

Omg you guys. I made an 8 minute video and when I watched it afterwards, I noticed I drooled down my chin early on in the video and the drop stays on my chin the entire rest of the video. I am way too tired to re-do it, and didn't know who else I could vent to!

[gruntled]

Rough night. Feel like a combination of having been run over and being extremely hungover.

Apparently I'm exceptional (yay) in the amount of blood in my stomach after surgery. Very very queasy. That coupled with the fact that my nose has been a trickling bleed ever since the surgery means that I have had the choice of sitting up and being ready to pass out or lying down and being ready to vomit.

The anti sickness meds they gave me didn't treat me too well either, and for some reason I have an idiot student day nurse, who insisted on not giving me painkillers when they were due, and then caved and gave me some oral paracetamol, which I immediately threw up...but obviously I wasn't allowed more.


So yeah, it's been a fun night. Sorry for being so graphic!

Has anyone been given the cold mask thing rather than ice packs? I'm finding it waaay cold. Also I'm feeling super buck toothed!

[deathorglory]

Gruntled, I'm sorry to hear you're super queasy! You can always ask for more antinausea meds - they put it through your IV so it doesn't go through your stomach and make you feel even worse. I threw up twice after surgery due to having blood in my stomach and I will say that I felt almost IMMEDIATELY better. It's all liquid, so there's no risk of choking, but it does taste rather gross...

For all of you out of surgery folks, CONGRATS! Just do your best to relax for a few weeks then when your surgeon gives you the OK, start aggressively working on stretching your jaw range of motion back out to what it used to be! I'm around 2.5 months out now and can open back up to about 3.5 finger widths... was previously able to open about 4.5 finger widths, but part of my wonders if part of that was because I had such a large overjet thus making my opening wider because my lower jaw was so small...? At any rate, I can eat just about whatever I want now (abstaining from the usual hard crunchy things for braces) but biting into thick things (think burgers or deliciously fat burritos) still takes a little bit of work. Not that it's not doable. I managed to cram a chicken sandwich into my mouth at just 3.5 weeks after surgery after all. There was a bit of smushing involved. ...But where there's a will there's a way!

I used syringes to drink for the first full week until I realized, hey self, you can feel your lips. ...Why aren't we using a cup?? ...I tried with a travel coffee mug first so if I couldn't take the amount of liquid, at least there was just a small opening and it wasn't an open cup or anything.

Kayla - Don't worry about just sleeping an hour at a time. When you wake up, do your best to fully wake up because your body will tire itself out pretty quickly and then you'll zonk out for a bit longer than just an hour afterwards. I was all kinds of in and out of sleep after surgery for the first few days, but I felt better after not trying to force my body to sleep until I was tired. ...Didn't take long to tucker me out, either.

Snap - Try easing off the codeine part of the tylenol by replacing it with plain tylenol (liquid OR tabs) to see how you do without the hard core stuff. FYI - Tylenol #3 (likely what you were prescribed) has 300mg of Tylenol in it. Regular PLAIN tylenol is 325mg, extra strength is 500mg, and arthritis tylenol is 625mg. You're allowed up to 3000mg of tylenol in your body a day, barring any drug interactions or liver disease or alcohol abuse issues. ...Considering you're holding your lips closed to drink water, I'm gonna assume you're not partaking of the alcohol. Another way to work with the pain is to alternate tylenol with ibuprofen. Tylenol works for 4-6 hours, ibuprofen for 6-8 hours. A lot of moms do this for kids with fevers (both will bring down a fever) or when their kids are teething.

Jaime - I'm sure you can talk about the drool in your next video as proof for areas of numbness Your xrays look AMAZING, btw!!!

Nozzel - I hope your surgery goes swimmingly!!! And hopefully a quick recovery for you, too