How long has it been?!
These past four months have just been CRAZY!
*Another hefty post alert!*
For starters, I know many other jaw surgery patients will
agree with me, I don’t even know where the time has gone! It only feels as
though I had my surgery two months ago if that. If it wasn’t for my slightly
changed face and nose shape as well as the numbness inside my mouth and bottom
lip, it would feel as if I had never had it done.
Let’s go back to the 26th January (one day before
the big day!) I had received a phone call from the hospital to pre warn me that
my surgery could be cancelled due to a bed shortage on the wards (such a shame
that the NHS is in this situation).
Obviously, this did initially get to me as I already had the original
date cancelled, due to my shingles. But I just thought, what will be will be
you know? The lady on the other end of the phone suggested that I still go to
the hospital at the time of 7am as if I were still having the operation (my
surgeon was happy to do the surgery if there was a free bed) but I just had to
be prepared for it to be cancelled or to be waiting around for a long period of
time.
So that evening, we still had my chosen choice of ‘the last
supper’ which was fish and chips. In my head I had convinced myself that my
surgery wasn’t going to go ahead, my mum and Nan knew it would go ahead.
Again, both of them were right (as per) and as soon as I got
to the hospital the next morning after scrapping the ice off the car, I was
having my blood pressure taken (which was sky high because I was so nervous!),
saw my surgeon and the lovely but slightly quirky anaesthetist and was getting
into my gown and those sexy stockings haha! Next thing I know, at 8 am, I was
being wheeled down to the operating theatre where I had to say my goodbyes to
mum and that I would be seeing her on the other side, this was quite emotional
for both of us! I think whatever age you are, you always need your mum by your
side, however, I can’t fault the girl who wheeled me down she was so friendly and
kept asking me questions that kept my mind of what I was heading towards.
The last thing I remember was laying on the operating table
and talking to the girl about how my co-workers were just getting their first
coffee of the day.
Then I woke up in recovery, groggy and not really with it,
with the nurses saying “Daisy, your mum is on her way.” The first thing I
wanted to do was one, check the time to see how long I was out for and two, see
what I looked like! I was shocked to learn that I was in surgery for a good
five hours all because the surgeon had a problem with my lower right side of my
jaw, it had crumbled during surgery once he put the pins in to secure
everything (my surgeons words – “Your jaw crumbled like a Crunchie bar.”) So it
did take a little longer than anticipated and instead of having a couple of
pins to hold my jaw into its new position, I now have a long plate that is
fixed along my jaw bone. Most of the time surgeons and orthodontists will
always favour to use the pins rather than the plates, it just in my case they
had no choice.
As soon as I was more awake and with it lets say, I was able
to leave recovery and be moved onto the ENT ward, and considering I’d just come
out of surgery I was in pretty high spirits. You wait so long and mentally
prepare yourself for this surgery when it actually comes to the day it all
feels surreal and scary, but once you’re out of recovery you can finally say ‘I
did it!’ and each day from then you are getting better.
My advice is to try and sit up and take in your
surroundings, take a few photos of yourself, check your phone, put on your
fluffy socks (or get someone too!) because the quicker you do this you will
just feel that little bit better!
I wasn’t actually that swollen on the day of the surgery, my
nose was a little ski sloped and I had a huge bandage covering my chin to
almost hold it in place. It was the following two days when my face started to
balloon, I even scared myself when I went to the toilet on the Sunday morning.
Looking back it’s just comical as I just didn’t look like me at all! My brother refused to look at me as apparently I looked like the monkey boy in the film Jumanji! Charming!!
The first couple of days when you’re in hospital are by far
the worst as you’re never truly comfortable, on my first night, I woke every
hour insanely jealous of the other three women on my ward who were snoring
away!
I’m so sorry for the length of this post and I know I have
droned on a bit, but when I was preparing for this I would endlessly read blogs
about peoples experience with this procedure. I wanted to know every detail
from the moment they came out of surgery and how they felt, so if you’re
reading this I know how you’re feeling, and even though everyone’s experience
is different but I hope I have given you a slight insight into what I
experienced.
Also I am going to be writing pretty honest top tips/things
I experienced during the whole recovery process, whether it’d be what I
experienced in the hospital, or things I couldn’t live without during the
recovery. Some of it may make you think that you don’t want to put yourself
through that, but honestly the whole recovery process it just temporary; the
results you’ll get are permanent!
