Hey I just wanted to give an update on everything. My surgery was on Thursday the 15th to move the jaws and then I had another surgery today because a metal bracket from my braces popped off during surgery and got sewn inside the cut.
To be honest I am having a really, really tough time with recovery.
When I woke up from surgery I was wired shut which I was not expecting. They said my lower jaw muscles were so tight that it was hard to move the lower jaw forward. They were concerned about the muscle tension causing relapse so they wired me shut for 3 weeks.
The first surgery took them 8 hours to do. When I woke up in recovery they took out the catheter and intubation tube from my nose which really hurt. Then this nurse started wheeling me really fast to my room and i started vomiting blood uncontrollably. It literally was SPRAYING out of my wired-shut mouth 3-4 feet on the walls, beds, nurses everywhere. Just the sheer amount if it was unbelievable. It was like a scene from Kill Bill. They got a suction hose and started suctioning out my mouth because they did not want to cut the wires. I felt like I was choking on my blood. It was coming out my nose also. Then an hour or two later when I stood up the same thing happened again. The surgeon later told me I lost about 2 liters of blood during the surgery (which is about half a gallon). I must have swallowed most of it.
When I tried to go to the bathroom later I felt like I had to pee so bad but could not pee. I think the anesthesia effects the muscles in the urinary tract. When I finally did get to pee it burned so much. It was honestly so painful. The pain stopped by the second day after but my urinary stream was very weak until about Day 5. It is so incredibly frustrating to feel like you have to pee so bad and not be able to go.
The actual pain from the surgery was the most bearable thing actually. It feels more like being numb and doesn't hurt. My lips, tongue, teeth, nose everything was completely numb. By around Day 5 I started to recover a lot of feeling. I can feel my tongue completely now which is a huge relief. The first night I started getting scared if I would ever be able to talk again and how my life would be ruined if I couldn't speak any more. But the surgeon said they had an advanced cone-beam machine that they used to locate the nerves during surgery. He assured me that they 100% did not cut the nerve and that all the feeling will come back again.
They did end up doing the genioplasty (2mm vertical and 5mm forward advancement) along with planned 7.1mm lower jaw advancement and 5mm upper advancement with no impaction (except 1mm from the lefort). The Le Fort was a two-piece LeFort and I believe they widened the upper jaw about 3mm. I have not made an aesthetic judgements on my face at all right now as to whether the moves look good. There is no point. I am swollen as huge as a balloon. The swelling seemed to increase up to day 3 for me then went down a lot around day 5, but it is still too soon to judge anything.
I spent 2 nights at the hospital and then went home. After getting home I desperately still wished I was at the hospital. I was drooling everywhere and my gums were bleeding still. My nose had a ton of hard dry blood in it that I tried to get out with wet q tips. Some of the pieces were literally humongous. Blood smells so disgusting. Every few minutes I wanted to use syringes to wash my mouth out because it smells and tastes so bad. But as soon as I stop rinsing it just starts accumulating again.
Honestly these were very dark days for me. I just started feeling so depressed being wired shut, struggling to eat anything and being so hungry. Also my mom has been a lifesaver but my dad has had no sympathy, yelling at me for dripping blood everywhere and making a mess when trying to eat at home. He just seems so freaked out and unable to cope with everything.
The antibiotic they gave me Clindomycin to take at home is liquid and tastes so horrible. It burns really bad going down. In the hospital they give it through iv which is so much better. I was supposed to take it three times a day. But is is so hard to take on an empty stomach. It made me really nautious after I took it and I could feel it burning in my stomach like fire each time I took it. By the third dose I started vomiting after taking it. I was throwing up all day. I could not hold any fluids down. I begged my mom to take me to the emergency room. She called the surgeon and he said to go to ER to get admitted. They immediately gave me i.v fluids and said my potassium was very low.
The next day they did an x-ray and discovered the metal piece in my gums and said they needed to do another surgery to get it out as soon as possible. So they planned the surgery for 2 days later to give me time to get i.v. fluids. They felt like I was too weak to handle another surgery immediately. I was devastated at the thought of having to be put under again and another surgery that would require new cuts to my gums.
So today, 6 days after surgery 1 they did surgery 2. They said the vomit had caused some of the sutures to come out so they re-did them and got the metal piece out. Because of the vomiting after the first surgery they gave me a different anesthesia medicine. After I woke up in recovery this time i did not feel nautious at all. But then I started literally crying for no reason. I just felt overwhelmingly sad for no reason. I think I was crying uncontrollably for 20 minutes. Then when the nurses wheeled me to my room all of a sudden I started getting angry and combative for no reason. I started throwing things at the nurses. Then I started crying again. It was literally one of the weirdest things I have ever experienced and I felt like it was all happening involuntarily. The doctors said the anesthesia can have this side effect in some people and was quite common.
My face has ballooned huge again after the second surgery. The pain is manageable and this surgery had no effect on numbnesss. I am still wired shut and starving. I have not had food in 6 days besides the apple juice, clear ensure, broth and water.
Anyway. Sorry if this is a rambling mess. In spite of everything I still think the surgery will turn out for the best. i have to be honest i was totally unprepared to deal with all of this though. I definitely am not trying to scare anyone off from jaw surgery. The actual pain is manageable to be honest the vomiting has been the hardest part for me and I don't think that happens to most people. Also, most people do not have to get wired either.
Sorry for any typos...I typed this in my iphone and i am still out if it kind of with the pain meds
