My Recovery Days 1 - 10 - Physical and Emotional Feelings
Hey everyone, I decided to create a blog to basically talk about how my recovery has been the first 10 days for my upper jaw surgery. Basically I had an underbite which needed to be corrected and would sometimes get slight jaw pain every now and then. My surgeon moved my jaw 5mm on one side and 4 mm on the other side. I am 19 years old and am currently on winter break from University.
So how do I feel physically? The first few days of recovery were hard, I’d say from day 0 (day of surgery) to about day 4. I was totally exhausted the first 3 or 4 days and just stayed in bed sleeping for the most part. I guess I will go a little bit more in depth on how I was feeling daily.
Day 0: I basically slept the entire day after my surgery, it was a 4 hour surgery which started at 8 am and ended at 12 pm. I remember waking up really feeling really groggy and heard my mom and anesthesiologist talking before I fell asleep again. The first day/ night I stayed in the ICU I threw up blood twice which was kind of scary, but the nurses were very alert and helpful. Honestly the day of my surgery was such a blur it went by pretty quickly.
Day 1: This day I basically slept the entire day and started icing my face regularly thanks to the nurses. I was kind of hungry since I didn’t eat since 6 am the day before. I had coffee and apple juice for breakfast, I couldn’t eat the jello because I was wired shut. But basically I spent this whole day just sleeping. My surgeon came and visited me just to see how I was doing.
Day 2: A little bit after the afternoon I was moved to my own room and out of ICU, I really missed the nurse I got in the ICU because she was so friendly, and so amazing at what she did. This day I stayed up a little more, and had more liquids like coffee, tea, ensure, tomato soup etc. The days I spent in the hospital were really boring because I had no wifi or TV, so be sure to bring something to read. My surgeon came and visited me again just to see how I was feeling.
Day 3: Today was my last day in the hospital, yay! I was so tired and bored and really just wanted to go home. I basically left the hospital by 11:30ish, and went straight to my surgeons office as he was going to remove my wiring from being wired shut. I was given orthodontic elastics and have 3 on each side of my mouth. I finally came home and showered and then fell asleep again.
Day 4: This was probably physically the worst day for me because the prior night I had taken morphine for the pain in my jaw, and then took a smaller amount in the morning as well. I think because I was taking this medication on an empty stomach, I ended up throwing up twice which was not a pleasant experience. Me being an idiot, also decided to take a shower and I ended up passing out twice, probably due to the morphine, so I never took it again, and the pain never got that bad to want to take it again. So then I just spent the rest of that day sleeping and taking it easy.
Day 5: I started to feel more alive and was able to sit around with my family and just watch netflix in bed all day.
Days 6 – 10: These days have been really easy for me physically, and the swelling has been gradually going down. I have enough energy to go walk around outside, but now comes the emotional part of my recovery.
Emotionally these past 10 days have been very VERY hard for me. It hasn’t had anything to do with the pain, or the diet, but rather not recognizing the person I see in the mirror anymore, to be more specific my nose has been causing me a lot of anxiety. I told my surgeon before hand that I really liked my nose and didn’t want it to change, and I know he tried really hard to do that as he told me he did 2 stitches to help prevent the widening of my nose. Despite him doing that my nose has gotten wider, and it has tipped up a lot in comparison to how it looked before, and its causing me a lot of anxiety and stress because I don’t know if its just the rest of the swelling on my fact thats making it look bigger or that my actual nose could be swollen. My whole cheek area near my nose and eyes feel numb and swollen, though the swelling has gone down. I feel like my smile looks weird now too due to my nose. A lot of YouTube videos and I’ve and blogs I’ve read haven’t really talked much about the nose changes after jaw surgery, and I’ve noticed in all the YouTube videos for upper jaw surgery that people nostrils due go down after time, but the wideness kind of stays the same which is really really depressing me more, because I honestly did not think my nose would have changed this much. Maybe its because I can see my nostrils more that it looks wider, I just hope it goes down. I keep telling myself that its only been 10 days and that so much is still going to change when it comes to swelling. Honestly I feel like I look like a monkey, and its just been really hard on me. My mom was against the surgery from the beginning and I can see the sadness in her eyes, and the worry that my face may not go back to what it was. I think at this point I’d do anything to get my old face back and go back to feeling pretty again. I feel hideous and I look hideous, and this has definitely been playing a role on me emotionally and mentally. Its only been 10 days, and I know peoples faces change up till 6 months later, so I should try to be more positive, but this is all I’ve been able to think about these past few days and I really hope it does get better, because its been eating me alive.
