#jawwiredshut

[kaligus]

#jawwiredshut no longer, brackets and rubber bands from here on

[kaligus]

#jawwiredshut mid-way

[brod2191]

I guess I should start a diary.

For all those who wonder what it’s like to live with your jaw wired shut.

A few things from the first couple days:

It’s difficult to tell what position you should hold your jaw in. 

Brushing your teeth sucks. Picture ripping open your chapped and swollen lips on top of getting bristles in open wounds from metal wires... Lots of blood.

Zero appetite. I think I’ve averaged 800 calories since my surgery and I haven’t been hungry. I think this will change as time goes on.

I love sleep but I’m afraid I’ll have a bad dream and rip my wires open.

Eating takes way too much time and usually involves taking some sort of medicine right after. I need a bib. Seriously. It’s gross.

Tylenol/Ibprofen is your bestfriend. (Way too much swelling in the face area).

I can’t feel my chin or my lower lip. Surgeon said it may or may not come back due to severing my nerve when I broke my jaw. (Good thing I can’t bite my lip, ammirite?!)

I can’t wait for May 27th.

[anonyrando-blog]

Jaw Surgery

About ten years ago I found out I was going to be getting a jaw surgery at some point in my life when I was done growing. This was for the purpose of fixing my under bite that I had. It was very bad and as I look back I see how bad it was. I couldn't even eat pizza. I would tear pizza up in little pieces and then eat it! PIZZA! That is one of the softer foods around! Anyways I've had braces for 7 years preparing for this demonic surgery and it has been kicking my ass. Braces suck so bad! I went into surgery on February the 26th. The last thing I remember before surgery was being in anesthesia. I had an older man nurse helping me out and he was really cute with me. I had to use nose spray to clear out my nose because they were going to be putting in a breathing tube for the surgery. Anyways we chatted it up while I waited for my nose to clear and then he went off somewhere and I remember laying there thinking "well, my death is inching closer." Then all of the sudden I had become completely loopy and started laughing hysterically. That man had given me the damn "goofy stuff" as I had called it and he did it quick. It knocked me out within a minute from what I remember. Then I had woken up and my surgeon did a little cheer "YAYY! YOU DID IT!" I was not pleased. I stayed a full night in the hospital and it was the worst night of my life. I remember having a breathing mask that I used the whole time, my nose bled everywhere constantly, I threw up (mostly blood) through my shut teeth all night, I didn't pee once, and I did not eat nor drink anything. I demanded morphine and more and more of it. But they gave me some nasty shit called Loratab if I remember correctly and it did not do much. I pushed the buttons for the nurses to come when I needed them and they proceeded to ask through the speaker "How can I help you?" Obviously they did not note that I could not talk! I just continued to press the buttons until they came down. That pretty much describes the first 24 hours. After that I started drinking Ensure and Naked juices. I had to use a syringe and it was a horrible horrible experience. It was a lot harder to drink good amounts of the stuff using a damn syringe and I could not sip through a straw because the swelling was so bad. Actually the syringe caused so much trouble that I just ended up not drinking more than a few syringes of whatever before calling it a night. This caused me to be majorly malnourished and I ended up getting the rubber bands (they don't wire much these days) taken off to free my mouth so I could actually drink from the bottles and just get them down a lot faster. I wasn't healing in the entire two weeks I had my jaw banded together and it had also caused infections. But once they bands were off I was getting more than 100 grams of protein down a day and even some mashed potatoes and soups. This caused me to heal a lot faster. So basically my first two weeks were the worst. I am still healing as we speak as it is a very long and slow process. But I had to post something about it because doing research got me no where. Not many have gone through the experience. So if anyone comes across this and has any questions please please feel free to contact me and I will get back to you about my experience! Things get weird like hygiene in the mouth, brushing teeth, treating incisions, yawning, bodily functions, etc. I'm not going to get into all of it right here but I will answer any questions!