Fay's Braces and BSSO Jaw Surgery Journey: Day 20

Today is Thursday.
This morning I got up at 7am to get the kids ready for school, etc, saw them out the door and then at 7.30am I did something I have never done before.....I went back to bed!
Dozed on and off until 9.45am by which time I gave myself a good talking to and thought how do I make myself feel better, what can I do?

So I got up, took some 5-htp, some passiflora and lemon balm and a multivitamin tablet. I got dressed and washed my hair (back to curly again).
And made sure I didn't watch any TV!
I put on some music and sat myself down at the computer and caught up with facebook messages and emails with a cup of tea.

Breakfast: readybrek with half a mashed banana

Tried to see how long I could go without painkillers and lasted from 10pm last night until 10am before I needed to take some ibuprofen. Jaw pain today rather than nerve pain.

Lunch: soup and a rhubarb crumble custard style yoghurt. Tried some of the crumble bit but felt the urge to chew too much so just had to eat the rhubarb and yoghurt part.

Today I had my third post-op checkup and this time with my usual ortho.
My husband dropped me off and the challenge for me today was to go to the appointment myself and to get 2 buses home.
This was the first time my ortho has seen me since before my op. A quick chat about how I was struggling this week with not recovering quick enough, she wasn't particularly reassuring but then there's not much that can be said is there?
And then it was down to business....45 minutes of it!
I asked if I could get my false tooth back in and she agreed; she thought I was going to ask :)

I was apprehensive about her guddling about in my mouth but I really wanted the tooth back in. So out came the archwire. I could feel me boring my head into the chair lol, I didn't think I could get it further in but it didn't hurt, I was just protective of my mouth.
In went the archwire to measure the position of my false tooth on the wire
Out came the archwire because now there was a gap.
The gap where my false tooth sits, has widen since I've had surgery, most likely due to the muscles, teeth movement and that I've had no dead coil, spring coil, powerchain or false tooth in there. It's now about 4 mm too big!
So on went some spring coil onto the archwire and in went the archwire again.
My ortho usually doesn't stop for rests; when she starts a job, she keeps going until she is finished. But today she was very nice and did give me little breaks because my jaw muscles were protesting and I was getting uncomfortable/sore.

But after 45 minutes, she had a new archwire in (minus some hooks), my false tooth in, spring coil, dead coil and wide powerchain all on the top. And new elastics again. Now I have orange elastics on the left in a triangular configuration and green elastics on the right in the same configuration as last week.

This will bring my top left teeth out towards my cheek a wee bit, move my top midline to the left a wee bit, close the overjet a wee bit and close the gap at the front too.

She measured my overjet (gap between my top teeth and bottom teeth when I bite together and said it was 4mm. So I was a bit disappointed because going by what the other ortho said last week, that meant the gap hadn't moved at all. But apparently it measured 5 mm last week....he LIED!! But I suspect he knocked a mm off so I wouldn't freak out any more than I was.
Something tells me, my braces are not going to be off in 4 months!

She explained to me that now my jaw has been broken, albeit carefully and surgically, my bone metabolism will have been sped up and so my teeth will move quicker than they did before surgery so we need to keep a close eye on them.

I saw my max fax surgeon today too. Spoke to him about my frustration at my recovery speed. He said that some people recover quicker than I am, some people take longer than I have to recover. My surgery was straightforward, no complications and minimal blood loss so there's no reason why I shouldn't make a full recovery, I just need to give it time. I told him about how things were on Tuesday and he said to keep doing little bits every day, although not as big as what I did on Tuesday (but that was little! :D ) and he reckoned I should manage to get back to work on 6th October as planned. I just have to remember how I was this time last week and see how much better I am doing now, so I could very well be even more better this time next week.

Once out of the ortho room, I went to the toilet to look at my teeth in the mirror...wow! what another change! It actually looked really weird seeing my tooth in. A whole new look to get used to again.

I then took the 2 buses home and managed just fine. Felt ok :) Of course, I was probably feeling better mentally as well having got my tooth back and having a whinge to the right people.

Home, made supper and then as I was feeling ok, I went with my husband and kids to visit my inlaws. This was my first time out visiting since my op. Of course, by the time we were half way there I was thinking 'maybe I shouldve just stayed at home'. But couldn't exactly turn back so we went and stayed for an hour and a half but I reached a point where I really did need to go home, I was sore.

Oops forgot...Supper was haggis, mashed potato and mashed sweet potato (I don't like turnip).

Home, painkillers, watched 1 TV programme and went to bed around 10pm

Now for the photos. Are you ready?? Excited??

First up is a picture of this gap, not quite the Grand Canyon but still big enough that I don't like it.