Surgery Yesterday!

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

I had surgery yesterday - lower jaw and upper jaw with an expansion

(widening) of my upper jaw as well. By all reports, the surgery went

well. I don't remember a thing. My anesthesiologist told me, " Ok, now

we're going to give you some meds that will make you happy to be

here. " The next thing I knew, I was looking at my beautiful wife

after the surgery in my room.

Some thing I've encountered so far:

I'm not in all that much pain. I haven't been taking all the

suggested doses because I haven't felt the need. I've been taking

about 500 mg of liquid Oxycodon about every 6 hours. It's really more

of an uncomfortable feeling than anything. Not much pain.

No nauseua, even though I did manage to swallow a bit of blood. That

sucker tube was my best friend yesterday.

I've got some swelling on my lower jaw - the upper jaw swelling is

pretty minimal. My doc said that I'm definitely in the lower 10% of

the patients he's treated in terms of the amount of swelling. I still

feel pretty inflated though!

I've got a retainer-like splint in my upper jaw to assist with the

expansion. It's a pain in the rear end but manageable. I've got two

elastics on the front of my teeth but I've been able to remove those

to eat and brush since I got home at 11-ish this morning.

Food - up until an hour ago, all food was delivered via a syringe

down one side of my mouth. This included juice in the afternoon

yesterday and vegetable soup broth last night. An hour ago, I decided

to try eating pudding and apple sauce. Things went really well - just

really awkward. I decided to leave the splint during this as it was a

little difficult getting it back in when the doc showed me at my post-

op exam this morning. I just took a nice long shower, cleared out all

the dried gunk in my nose and am feeling a little more refreshed.

I know I've got a long road ahead and I will probably encounter some

bad days here and there, but the biggest part I worried about is

behind me. Thanks everyone for being supportive. I hope this post is

a little encouraging for someone about to have surgery.

I'll update again soon!

JT