It honestly feels as though my entire life has been building up to this moment. The moment when a bunch of surgeons replace my upper jaw with a piece of titanium which will let my teeth for together.
I wasn't nervous, I was excited. I was a little anxious that my face would change drastically and/or I wouldn't recognise myself (and there were a few days there when I couldn't, not really), but for the most part I was absolutely ready to accept and embrace any facial changes because not being able to close my mouth was Hell.
So, let's take a look.
We've checked out enough of my 'before' shots so you should know what my underbite and face looked like before this day and I'm not going to bore you and post more of those photos here, so if you like you can always scroll back a bit through my blog to compare.
This first photo was taken the afternoon after my operation that morning. A lot of blood. Like a lot, a lot more than I had anticipated. And a lot less swelling. But a lot of blood. I had a constant nosebleed and the blood would coagulate and dry into solid balls and I would need to clear them to breathe (as my mouth was banded shut), and then the bleeding would start again. This went on for days in hospital and out of hospital.
I was on a lovely combination of morphine, endone and tramadol so my memory of my four-day hospital stay is a bit foggy.
Luckily I have a great boyfriend (who, at this stage, I'd only been with for three months) who stayed every day and as long as the nurses would allow into the night and cleaned my face every few minutes, as shown below.
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| From this... |
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| To this <3 |
The swelling peaked pretty quickly, and I hated my reflection. I was very puffy and my nose was very swollen:
My recovery was fairly quick though. I was even able to give a teensy smile on my third or fourth day in hospital:
A lot of dried blood on my teeth, as you can see, and very thick rubber bands (that you can also see) prevented me from opening my mouth whatsoever. I was taking all of my pain relief and antibiotics through a drip and on my third and fourth day in hospital I was required to "eat" sustenance (those awful gritty and powdery protein drinks that take like citrus medicine). I had to do this through a syringe which my boyfriend fed through a tiny gap in my teeth like a thread in the eye of a needle.
About a week following the surgery I was able to take this comparison shot to detail the difference in my bite:
And around the 2 week mark post-surgery, all the bands had snapped and I had free range of movement, even if not full range. I was on a non-chew diet for a month and even now, four months after this operation, I still have difficulty biting into hard things. This is mostly due to my top teeth not being sharp enough yet (as before now my bottom teeth had done all the initial biting), but chewing is no problem. Actually, it's better than it's ever been, even with braces. My mouth is like a blender and I can't wait to see how much easier chewing is when my braces come off (which will be in 1 - 3 months!)
<3
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