Day 0: D-Day

Today was operation day, and aside from my bite magically fixing itself without surgery, it could not have gone any better. As I had mentioned earlier my surgeon had thought that double jaw surgery was the only way to go, guess who was wrong? That's right! While in the operating room he found that only my maxilla (upper jaw) would have to be surgically altered. What he initially did was drill a small portion of my right lower jaw, but he then decided to work on the upper jaw. Due to my congenital deformity, there was apparently a large gap in my maxilla, and once he fixed that, my mandible(lower jaw) just sort of fell into place. The surgery, which was initially set to take 4 hours minimum, ended up only being 3 and a half and commenced at 11:30. Also, I didn't come out looking like Penelope!

 After leaving recovery and being moved to my hospital room, I wasn't even encountering much pain. They had it extremely well controlled and gave me a little button to push that could release a bit of morphine every 8 minutes if I needed it. The most annoying parts of my stay in the hospital were surprisingly the tube pumping my stomach, which irritated the back of my throat a bit making it hard to swallow anything from my syringe, and frequent potty breaks due to my saline drip. Although it wasn't the most pleasant or restful night I've ever been through, it was no where near as horrific as I had imagined it to be. I owe a lot of what made that night tolerable to my nurses, who were always willing to come and help me out, so huge thanks to Kim, Val, Tina and Sandy, as well as my parents who took shifts sleeping in my room overnight. My second doctor, Dr. Maxilla P. Bearstein, also helped out quite a bit. (Thanks mom)

Day -1: The Last Supper

Well, it's finally (almost) here. Tomorrow is my surgery date and I get to wake up bright and early to go get my jaw cracked, 5:30 to be exact. I won't go into the operating room until approximately 7:30, and the early arrival is to leave plenty of time to get the anesthesia and other prep work done. Luckily we are within walking distance of the hospital and I'll get a chance to move around a bit before lying down for what will seem like forever.

My surgeon was happy to report that my model surgery, which is done with the molds made from the impressions mentioned in "As long as I don't come out looking like Penelope..."  , went very well. He also realized through the model that double jaw surgery really is the only way to go for me to come out with the best results. Surgery is set to take about four hours and end around 12 o'clock, however, it could realistically take six hours. After that I will be in the hospital overnight, and possibly for a second day, depending on how well the operation goes. I realize that in earlier posts I said I would post daily after surgery, but I have no idea how I will feel tomorrow or the day after, so don't go crazy and get all up in my grill or assume that I died if I don't start blogging as soon as I'm out of the O.R. I promise I will catch all of you up once I am fit to type.

Aside from all of the official business of tomorrow morning, I'm set to go! Even though surgery is looming, I still don't feel all that worried and the biggest qualm I have at the moment is that I might wake up starving. I can't eat or drink anything after midnight, so I've been feasting for the past few days; I'm pretty sure I ate close to a whole cake over the weekend. Don't judge. As for my "last supper", I was in bacon cheeseburger heaven.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

   Only 8 days remain until mission double jaw surgery takes place and today's pre-surgical agenda included surgical hooks. What exactly are surgical hooks you might ask? They are small little antennae-like nubbins that are placed on the wire of my braces. The purpose of these otherworldly metal bits is to add places for the mouth binding rubber bands (or wire) to latch on to after surgery so that my jaws stay nice and closed. Surprisingly enough, the hooks aren't even that annoying, and I'm sure I'll be used to them within a few days.

   Now that you all can see my bite up close, I figure that it's time to explain just what is going on. No I'm not laughing, the picture above shows my mouth completely closed, and the reason for my teeth not touching in the front is my anterior open bite. My bite is caused by a congenital deformity of, well, basically my entire face, and the deformity results in the lovely 5mm gap we see above. The goal of surgery is to close my teeth, reduce the gumminess of my smile, and fix the cant of my jaw. And the goal of that goal is to make it easier for me to eat, talk, breath, etc. I don't know about you guys, but in my opinion those are some pretty important functions.


   Aside from all of the technical talk, I can't relay just how many times I've heard "are you excited?" this week and each time I have had the pleasure of replying "that's not exactly the right word." There is not a snowball's chance in hell that I am excited to partake in a 6 hour surgery, yet at the same time I'm not nervous either. It might just be that D-day is too far in the future for me to spend much time worrying; only time will tell. So the word I'll choose to describe how I'm feeling at the moment will be short and sweet: ready.