Double Jaw Surgery: Days 8-14

Okay, I will try and keep this one a little shorter! It's tough because I want to ensure that I share all the little bits I wasn't prepared for to help people the most, and sometimes that means a serious amount of detail, but here goes.

After hell week (days 1-7 of recovery), day 8 came like a breath of fresh air! My Mum was still there to look after me, which to be honest I really needed - emotionally more than physically. When you're in discomfort, it is awful to be alone, so I really advise that you ensure you have someone to properly look after you 24/7 for at least the first 7 days. I thought 24 hour care would only be necessary for about 4/5 days, but it's awful being alone all day when recovering, and you still need help doing daily tasks such as cooking, doing the dishes, grocery shopping etc. But really the improvement on day 8 was incredible.

Day 8 - look at that bruising!

I woke up with pain levels at just a 6 and these went down once the painkillers kicked in. Definitely still there, but much more manageable. I also decided that now was the time to start eating mashed foods rather than liquids, and this made my energy levels so much better. After having done the EFT technique, I was able to manage my pain and discomfort better than before as I was now able to think of it as a necessary function of my body to heal itself - a natural part of the healing process. Thinking of pain as something external that's happening TO YOU makes it easier to get down about it. Whereas if you trust that your very clever body knows what it is doing to be able to heal itself, it's somehow easier to accept. And that's what EFT is all about - accepting a situation and accepting your feelings, and saying that it's okay to feel this way. It really really does help!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I hated bed rest and it made a lot of my body numb. I have pretty poor circulation, so I tried to incorporate daily walks and gentle stretches into my schedule. On day 8, I was particularly worried about the numbness, but didn't feel strong enough to take a walk yet, so my Mum constructed this bizarre resting tower out of cushions for me - loads stacked up in front of the sofa, with pillows on top so that I could be on my knees rather than my bottom, and lean my whole torso on the whole pile of cushions. It felt like a birthing position but it definitely helped! I also put a heat pack on my face to help with the pain.

I was pretty reliant on ice for the first week to help ease the incredible discomfort from swelling, but they do say that after the first few days it doesn't have much effect on the swelling apart from simply making you more comfortable. You should avoid heat the first few days as it makes swelling worse, but after a week or so it can help ease the pain. I alternated heat and ice that day (with the same pack - I bought a gel pack from Boots which can either be submerged in hot water to be a heat pack, or placed in the freezer to be an ice pack - genius! Top tip - buy two and tape the two little sacks together for a pack that can sit on top of your head and dangle down onto both cheeks and jaws)

That day I cooked us a no-chew meal of super mashed up white potato, super mashed up sweet potato, and soy mince and gravy blended together to get rid of the chunks. It was absolutely glorious to be off soups! You get so sick of them really fast...

I ate the most I had managed to eat since the surgery, and it really helped me to start feeling stronger! Sweet potatoes are so nutritious, so get these into your liquid diet as much as possible. More on recipes and nutrition in a dedicated post ;)

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

We decided that I had improved enough for my Mum to be able to book transport back home on the Saturday (day 9). It was really emotional having her leave as I had got so used to having her here, and this was the longest we had spent together since I went off to University 8 years ago!

Day 9 swelling and bruising

That day we attempted to take a bus to my boyfriend's parents, who had been trying to visit for ages but I kept turning them away because I just felt too poorly to be able to see anyone except my boyfriend and my own Mum. We tried to catch the bus, but this was a terrible mistake. The roads in Manchester are awful and so the bus was really bumpy - not what you want when you've just had your face broken! I was terrified the bumps were going to damage the healing bones, so I insisted we got straight off and took a taxi home, which wasn't much better. Although walking gently with nice cushioned shoes like trainers is fine, I really recommend avoiding public transport for a couple of weeks because it is just too rough on the delicate healing area.

On day 10, my boyfriend had organised a surprise visit from my two best friends. He had to ruin the surprise that morning and check I was definitely okay to receive visitors, but I was over the moon to get to see them, especially as it had been my 26th birthday 5 days after surgery but I had been so damn poorly we just pretended that my birthday didn't exist! We just chilled on the day bed, exchanged a few stories and ate mashed mexican food! This was an absolute treat after a week or so of soups and shakes. All eaten off a teaspoon and swallowed without any chewing of course ;) It was effing DELICIOUS and I ate as much as I could.

DEPRESSED THOUGHTS

This is the hardest part to talk about. Day 11 my boyfriend returned to work. Pain levels were low and I was only taking about half the amount of painkillers I was allowed to by this point, and swelling had improved dramatically. However, being alone all day is tough even after you've got through the worst of the recovery, and it is mainly tough mentally.

As I explained at the beginning of my first post, I am a freelance dancer and performer and I run my own performance and events company, You Topia Productions. Being away from work this long is scary (and difficult when you're a workaholic like me), so I hoped that now that my boyfriend was back at work, I would be able to slowly start working from home again too. I had made all these plans for all the things I would like to achieve during my recovery period, which ranged from finishing my website to getting business cards printed, to doing my taxes for the last financial year. (FYI, as much as you may have good intentions of getting loads of work done, your brain is pretty foggy for the first couple of weeks so you may find it really difficult to settle to tasks. I remember the first time I tried to catch up on emails and it literally made my brain hurt!)

So that day I decided to get cracking on my website, and if anyone has had a look at it, the home page is 4 large pictures of me in my Kiki Soso burlesque routine outfit, with my pre-surgery face. Now I haven't spoken much about this in my blogs so far, but I haven't been over the moon with how my face actually looks post-surgery. The first week I was concentrating on just recovering and getting stronger, but even from the first day I wasn't particularly overjoyed with my bite, which appeared to have been hugely overcorrected. I now had an overbite and an overjet which totally changed the way I not only looked, but spoke. And that was just the changes to the bite. In addition, the surgery had totally changed my jawline and chin to be much smaller and less defined, and also made my nose slightly upturned. I didn't recognise myself anymore, and I definitely didn't like the changes I saw.

Comparing my new face to the face I saw on those pictures sent me into a deep dark hole. I hated my new appearance so much, and couldn't help but think that I had gone through hell for a result that was worse than what I had started with. I cried for more than 2 hours straight that day. I felt like I had lost the parts of my face that I closely associated with my personality, both socially and on the stage. My strong defined jawline was gone, my nose looked all piggy, my face was shorter.

Before braces/surgery That day I cried...

I say this not to try and scare people out of having surgery, but to make people aware of how much these tiny changes can affect one's face. You wouldn't believe how attached you are to your own face, even despite the underbite which I wasn't hugely keen on. I am writing this on day 16 post-op, so there is still a LONG way to go - my face will continue to change for the next 6-9 months before it finally settles, and the orthodontists will do everything in their power to ensure I finish with a good bite result, but nevertheless it is extremely distressing to be left with a face you don't recognise, and wishing you had never gone through with the surgery.

It is worth me pointing out at this point that many people do experience both depressive thoughts and feelings of regret in the early stages. But for at least the majority of people, this does change with time. I had already scared myself by researching online whether some people regretted it forever - and yes there certainly are people who are still devastated years down the line. It's important to be aware that there are risks with every surgery, particularly those which are intended to alter the appearance in some way. But then I also found Seoulful Sydney's blog and channel and saw her videos about having trouble with coming to terms with the results at 6 weeks post surgery, and how much better she then felt 4 months after the surgery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M97FKOjAL0M&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg7wfjRwmhQ&t=532s

So there is lots of hope.

That day I reached out to all the people I knew who had had the same surgery as me and begged for advice and words of comfort. Luckily one of them came massively to the rescue, and explained that he had similar worries not too long after the operation, but that with time it really did settle into a new shape, and he became totally accustomed to his new look.

BEING PRODUCTIVE AND PROACTIVE

After that very very dark day, the following day I sat down to start writing this blog (the first entry). It felt so good to have something productive to do that was therapeutic and non-committal at the same time. I am one of those people that hates doing nothing. I live life at 100 miles an hour, so having to rest constantly for recovery was killing me, but at the same time having been away from my work for so long (yes, to me 10 days is LONG) the idea of doing serious work-related things felt overwhelming.

I also decided I needed to start taking care of myself again where possible. It's quite nice to not give a shit about your appearance for a couple of weeks, but it is also nice when you decide to have a good hair wash, throw on some colourful clothes and get out the house. I had so much more of a positive day!

Uplifting colours for an uplifted mood

PAIN RETURNS

Pain and discomfort really were quite low now and I was only taking painkillers a couple of times a day; well, that is until I went to see the orthodontist exactly 2 weeks after surgery. He was pleased with how things looked from the surgery, but to correct the overcompensation which had given me an overbite and overjet, he fitted me with much tighter elastics than before. Despite the fact that these were now so tight I could hardly open my mouth, for the first 5 hours or so this just felt like a gentle pressure. My nighttime however, some serious pain had started to kick in. Elastics are used to either close gaps between the teeth or correct the bite, and therefore are a huge strain on your muscles, which are attempting to heal in their old position. I had pain running from my temples, down into my jaw muscles (both the ones on the outside of the lower jaw AND under it), plus my ear canals and neck muscles - this stuff is all connected!

The pain was so bad that despite painkillers I didn't manage to sleep much that night and I had to return to the day bed in the lounge as I kept waking up. I knew we had passed the worst though, and was glad to have got through the first two weeks!

Check out my little video for week two here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNt5WvTp3jQ

The next actual update in the timeline will be the 4 week mark, as the changes from week 2-4 aren't as obvious, but I plan to write two more posts between now and then - one about vegan liquid diet recipes, and one about top tips and essential buys to get through surgery recovery :)

Feel free to get in touch with any Qs or comments!