Recovery Tips

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone. I am 9 days post op, having had my lower jaw advanced

8mm. I've had braces for just over a year. My recovery is going well

and several of you are gearing up for it, so I thought I'd share

what helped me, if you're interested.

2 months or so before: Start taking lots of Vitamin C & E

2 or so weeks before: Start taking arnica pills (homeopathic, from

any health food store--helps w/bruising & swelling)

After the surgery:

(1) I had ordered the " hospital kit " from Zip-n-Squeeze ahead of

time. Their Jaw Wrap was ideal to keep ice on constantly. It comes

with 2 sets of ice packs, which wasn't quite enough to keep one

always frozen, as I had to change it about every 90 minutes. I found

that ziploc bags of frozen peas worked just fine, and slipped right

into the pockets of the jaw wrap. SO much better than what the

hospital sent me home with.

(2) Start taking liquid vitamin C right away.

(3) Continue the arnica pills and rub arnica gel on your cheeks and

neck about 3x a day.

(4) When it's time to start heat, I used this travel neck pillow I

found. It's full of grains of some sort and you microwave it for 2

minutes and get wonderful moist heat. The label says you can get it

from www.TheHappyCompany.com and it's called " Happy Wrap " . I found

mine at Long's drugstore.

(5) I can almost spoon some stuff in now, and have found that little

baby spoons work nicely. Teaspoons are still too big. Also, get BIG

straws---much easier to suck than those skinny disposal ones.

These things seemed to have helped me quite a bit. I feel amazingly

good at 9 days post-op. I also had the support of a wonderful

family, friends and loads of prayer. Even at the hardest day (for

me, about day 5)it's still better than the anticipation and worry

about the unknown. IT'S OVER!!!!! I wish all of you the best of

healing. Hope some of this was helpful to you!