The Big day...

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 26^th 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!