Relapse?

[BriBri97]

Okay so I had lower jaw surgery 8 days ago. I'm still a little swollen but not terrible and I'm feeling amazing. But I have noticed that if I don't pay attention to my bite, it wants to go back to the right (where it was before). This really concerns me. I can make it go to where it's supposed to be easily but I'm afraid that I'm going to relapse and we had been planning this surgery for 2 years, had a bunch of insurance junk go on, and then they nearly couldn't fit me into the surgeons schedule. So after all of that, I really can't even imagine my jaw going back to where it was. I think the problem is that my back molars are not quite straightened out yet so when I go to bite down my jaw moves so that they touch (because of course I chew mostly on the right side of my mouth) but I'm not sure. I'm going to try and teach myself to chew on my left side mostly so I don't have to shift my jaw out of place but will that even help? Any thoughts or tips to stop a relapse? I'm going to ask my orthodontist when I go to see him next week but I figured I would see if anyone had any tips on this.

[notrain]

normally your surgeon should give you elastics for your braces / bite splint to prevent this.

If he hasn't he either thinks it won't be a problem or he has forgotten about it. Just ask him.

[molestrip]

That's normal. Your surgeon moved the bone and cut some tissue. It all needs to stretch out and you need to relearn to use it. Sometimes people have trouble speaking and swallowing even. I don't know that your habits are significant but that's the nature of relapse, it's a tug of war between the bones and soft tissue until it heals. After that, it can remodel too. It can happen in the joint as well, even though it wasn't operated on. Your surgical plan had some flexibility here, bigger movements are less stable and certain kinds of movements are less stable. Past that and surgeon instructions, it just comes down to odds. Relapse happens.