Life Changing Experience

Wow, I haven’t written here in ages. I don’t know why I stopped but maybe I should keep on writing…

It’s been exactly one week since I had my jaw surgery and surprisingly I’m starting to handle it very well. I don’t know if most of you know but I just recently had a jaw surgery (Orthognathic surgery) last Monday. The reason why I had it was because I had a really bad severe underbite (Class III malocclusion ) that has been affecting me my whole life. I wasn’t able to eat properly, it made me difficult to talk and was self-conscious about my appearance. When you look at the front view of my face, my jaw looks normal but if you look at me by sideways, you could see the lower jaw is more forward than the upper jaw (if that make senses?).

I did use to wear braces back in Year 7 to straighten up my teeth and to fix my underbite but because I didn’t wear the headgear (which I was supposed to but hated it), it didn’t really help but at least my teeth were straighten. =D I also forgot that I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed so I didn’t have to do two surgeries. (yay!)

For those who are wondering how I’m feeling after one week, I’m feeling fine. Even tho, I know I can’t eat properly and my annoying swelling, I’m actually feeling fine. There’s no pain at all which I was surprised as I was expecting pain. But at the moment, I have some numbness in my lower face which is a bit scary because I can’t feel anything except when I put pressure on it. Apparently, it takes at least three months to get the feeling back (yes, three months I think?)

What was it like to have the surgery? Well, I wanted to answer this question because I get these type of questions a lot but before the surgery…I was stressing out about it because this surgery was a major one and you know how much I hate operations (it’s like my sixth one now). Even had a breakdown just right before I got wheeled into theatre. Ever heard of anesthesia awareness? That was on my mind for a bit. I don’t want to scare people but anesthesia awareness is where they put you to sleep but they didn’t put enough dosage of anesthesia and so you wake up during the operation, like you can feel and hear but you can’t move as the medication has paralyzed you and the doctors/nurses think you’re unconscious. Basically, that’s it if my explanation made any sense but yeah. =/

*trigger* (procedure of the surgery)

Okay, I had to put a trigger sign because I don’t want people to freak out with the procedure of the surgery. So anyway,, they had to cut off both the bone and carefully align the two jaws together and once it was set, they inserted the bolts and plates so it won’t move and it is put permanently so it won’t move. I find it very complicated even for myself!

My doctor was really pleased how my surgery went and even surprise as she thought the surgery would take four to five hours but it only took three and a half hours. After the operation, I was wheel into ICU and stay there overnight. They had to wait for me to recover from the anesthesia.

The first few days of my recovery were the hardest. My face was all swollen up, had to get an ice pack around it, had all these drips attached to my arm/hand, threw up three times because of the anesthesia and the internal bleeding inside. I also had this pain relief pump attached to my drip which is called patient-controlled analgesia. Whenever I was in pain, I could press the button to get morphine instead of the nurses giving you painkillers. Hmm…seems weird saying that to get morphine. But yer, the funny thing I find is I was so out of it…sorta like high on the morphine. I thought I broke my jaw for some reason coz I heard this crack noise and I was in pain. People couldn’t understand what I was saying most of the time so I had to keep writing all these words that made no sense at all and it was all over the place. It was pretty funny but scary as well!

Well, I want to keep writing more on my surgery but I will continue on later in my next entry. Before I finish off, I wanted to say thanks for all the people supporting me during this tough time and I appreciated your comments. I also want to say thanks to my awesome family who’ve supported me all my life and even though they have to deal with my issues, they still keep supporting me. I also want to say thanks to all the professionals involved with my treatment and without them, I wouldn’t be in this position. I know this is so cheesy but I want to say thanks to Oscar, my polar bear for being with me all the time in the operation room and for never leaving my side. I feel like I’m a kid now. -.-” Anyway, this has been a life changing experience for me and I’m starting to enjoy life more and that’s the truth.

Hope all is well with you guys and as I always say, be random but stay safe people! ^_^

*hugz*

2 Comments on “Life Changing Experience

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