Day 1

            So, I decided to make a blog. On November 15th, 2012 I had double jaw surgery. They widened my upper jaw 1 cm, moved my bottom jaw forward 1 cm and took out my wisdom teeth. I'm making this blog mostly because I want people to hear about the good jaw surgeries too, and learn some tips that saved me from going mentally insane the last 2 weeks. I'm not a good writer, so that's a warning ahead of time. :)

             I know I started this late, but that's because I didn't really care to make one. Then as I was looking at blogs today (November 30, 2012), I realized a lot of bloggers had horrible luck with surgery! I want people to know that, jaw surgery isn't always unlucky. I'm going to try to remember as much as I can from the past 15 days. I'm apologizing for my possibly horrible punctuation ahead of time.

          Day 1: It's around 6 or 7 in the morning and I have a glass of water. My throat was dry and I was told not to eat or drink anything after 12:00AM the night before. Somehow I got the thought that you were allowed to drink water but nothing else, cause I figured, hey, its water, what is it going to do to me? My mom walked down the stairs and had a look of horror when she saw me drinking the water. So I asked what was wrong and she told me I'm not supposed to eat or drink anything including water because if my stomach has any liquids or food in it I could possibly throw up while I'm under the anesthetic. So now we're both freaking out, she's saying she doesn't know what to do because there's a tiny risk of death, and I end up fainting. This put us behind schedule and seeing as we had to drive to St. Thomas, ON from London, ON, it was a slight inconvenience; Could've been the hospital 5 minutes away from home but no, they don't have the rights. We decided to look up my situation, many websites said to tell your surgeon, but of course if we were to do that my surgery would be cancelled, and on top of waiting 4 years, I'd have to wait even longer. We kept researching on the road, and a website said that water leaves your system 2 hours-ish after you drink it. This made us feel much better and we decided to just keep quiet.

heres a picture of me, day 1, I didn't clean myself
 up for it al all, so sorry about the hideousness

         We get set up in the hospital, and a nurse was preparing me. Putting me in my gown, giving me mouthwash, removing my toe polish leftovers from summer (oops). Next was the IV, after shoving it into my hand, she told us that it didn't work. So I was rolled out of the room, and eventually after waiting in a bed in the hall (one of the funnest parts of the hospital is being rolled in a bed), and being talked to by various people, I was rolled into the operation room. To my advantage they told me that they were going to wire a tube through my nose to my stomach to suction out any blood that went in. But my only thought was that the tube will suction out the water. I forgot to mention, but at this moment I was going into the surgery not knowing whether I was going to be wired shut, or what. My surgeon had to wait until the surgery happened to see what my situation was. He said my surgery was one of the hardest surgeries he's done because my mouth was so small. Luckily somebody of importance decided to put a "laughing gas mask?" on me to calm me for the IV. It was my first time being given laughing gas, and I must say it was pretty fun. It was like becoming instantly tipsy from alcohol. They just told me to keep inhaling the gas, and one of the surgeons was telling me a joke. The last thing I remember is laughing at the joke, her saying it's in, and I was gone. Normally they make you count down or something, but I don't remember any of that. Next thing I remember is waking up in a room, with a whole bunch of other beds, super woozy. The first thoughts that popped into my head were "I didn't throw up" and "did they wire me shut?".  Oddly there was no nurses crowded around me and they were attending to other patients. I assume I fell back asleep, but I for sure know that I closed my eyes. I was extremely out of it, but at some point they rolled me out of that room, and to a more personal room, split by curtains for 2 people to stay in. First of all, for anyone whose worried, the nurses are super nice, they take great care of you, the bed-chairs are really comfortable, the drugs are given to you through the IV and they work instantly. What I remember next is waking up and seeing my mom in the chair and having an ice pack, that's shaped to go around my head. These moments are blurry. There is like a residual soreness in your face once you're awaken, but that's why you sleep. Also my face was pretty swollen (my surgeon says not as bad as he expected), and your mouth will be numb so it'll be hard to talk. But I promise you the pain isn't that bad, the reason being that all the nerves in your face are damaged during the surgery, without those nerves, you can't feel much at all, and it will stay that way. For anyone who is scared about the pain, keep a good attitude and you'll realize that the fact that they broke (in my case) your upper and low jaw, shifted them and took out your wisdom teeth, the pains not bad at all. Of course it's still pain, and on top of being hungry it seems worse at the moment, so just remember that. I'm not gonna lie, you just got surgery so your nose will be bleeding because of popped blood vessels, and blood will be in your mouth. They have a suction tube right beside your bed to suction out the blood, fortunately I don't get to grossed out by it. For most of that day you sleep, you might wake up every couple hours or so, depends on your pain and how good you are at sleeping or visitors.