5 day post-op report

[Guest guest]

Hi all -

This is my 5-day report. I'll try to keep it brief. I'm a 44-year

old male with an overbite ( " deep bite " ). I've been in braces for

1.5 years. The plan is to hopefully be done with the whole thing by

the end of the year.

Wednesday morning June 9 - lower jaw surgery (bilateral sagittal

split) to advance about 7 mm. The surgery was about 2 hours I

think. I woke up in recovery at 12:00 noon and soon after that they

wheeled me to my room. Hoag hospital in Newport Beach is nice

because surgery patients get a private room. If any of you in

Orange County is trying to decide which hospital to use, I recommend

Hoag.

I spent the night in the hospital. The worst part of that was I had

to pee into a cup because of all the monitors and stuff. My doctor

was not happy the next morning when he saw me still connected but oh

well. There were compression bandages and ice packs on my face.

The ice packs were refreshed a number of times. The ice packs would

continue for 72 hours after surgery. I had the PCA (Patient

Controlled Analgesic) and there was essentially no pain. They asked

me at least 10 times during the night if I had any pain (on a scale

of 0-10) and I told them " zero " every time. But by no means was

I " out of it " I was fully awake and functional.

On Thursday morning I checked out and went home. My jaws were

rubber banded shut, so I had to use zip-n-squeeze for everything. I

took Ensure, fruit juice and chicken soup for the next few days.

You just sort of have to tough it out I guess. I'm not sure why but

I didn't sleep well for the first couple of days. I'm sleeping

better now. I won't lie to you it's no fun but probably not as bad

as you're imagining.

After noon on Saturday (72 hours post-op) I began to alternate moist

heat and ice packs on the swollen areas. The moist heat is to help

the blood clots dissolve and be absorbed. All this time I took

antibiotics and pain medications. I stopped the pain meds on

Saturday night (I think). After stopping the pain meds, I found I

was a little bit achy and the swollen areas were now a bit tender

but the pain is no worse then when you have your wisdom teeth out.

So there was no reason to go back onto the pain meds.

Beginning Sunday I abandoned the zip-n-squeeze and just starting

using drinking straws. You don't want to suck too hard on the

straws though, only clear liquids (Ensure, juice, water). Even

though I drank a ton of Ensure and fruit juice, I still lost a

couple of pounds but I'm one of those skinny guys who can't gain

weight anyway.

So that brings us to today (Monday). I had my first post-op meeting

with my OS today. He took an x-ray, said everything looked great,

and removed the rubber bands. He replaced them with two bands that

are significantly larger so I can actually open my mouth and speak

relatively normally. I came home and made some scrambled eggs.

They were pretty darn good. I'm now on a " no chew " diet.

My next meeting with my OS is in about 10 days. In about a week I'm

supposed to call my Ortho and let him get back to work.

So that's it for now. I hope this information is helpful.

Jay