Days 11-12: Post surgery appointments and I'm feeling fantastic!

Over the last couple of days I have had follow up appointments with both my orthodontist and my maxillofacial surgeon to check on my progress.  My temporary live-in carer (aka Cindi, my amazing friend from California) is still in Australia so it was fun to be able to take her along to my appointments.  I really wanted her to meet the people who have been taking care of me.

First was my orthodontist appointment on the Monday morning.  I absolutely love visiting the office of my orthodontist because the team there are so warm and friendly.  They were all really excited to see me and commented on how good the results looked, which of course made me feel great.  The appointment was a fairly quick one and my elastic bands were changed to a different configuration.  Elastics are really important after jaw surgery as they guide/train your jaw to its new bite.

My beautiful new elastics!

The appointment with my surgeon the following day was a general check-up to see how I am healing and if I was having any discomfort or pain.  I can honestly say that I am feeling pretty wonderful - especially considering my surgery was less than two weeks ago.  Aside from the first few days which were very uncomfortable, I have had no pain or soreness, no major trouble talking, no trouble sleeping, no bleeding and no sickness or nausea.  Even my surgeon commented that I seem to be a couple of weeks ahead of where they would expect me to be.

I'm not writing this to gloat, but hopefully to give some hope to others going through (or about to go through) this process.  It's not all dribbling and pain and my surgeon puts my fast recovery down to my positive attitude.  I absolutely agree with this, because it is amazing what your body can do and how fast it can heal when you feel happy and positive.  I also put it down to having a fairly high pain threshold.

I took the opportunity to ask my surgeon again about what he did during surgery (the last time we discussed this I was in hospital in a drug fuelled state) and I have to say it is nothing short of amazing.  He explained that at my next appointment they would be taking an x-ray so I could see the results, but I already see the results every single day and here are the latest photos.

The most important question I wanted to ask my surgeon - when could I start brushing my teeth?  He said that I could have been doing that already (which I didn't realise) and gave me some tips on how to brush and where to be careful.  So the first thing I did on returning home was brush my teeth for at least ten minutes and I can tell you, it felt great!  Fresh breath ahoy!