Day 57 - 2 month check-up

Still here, despite my efforts at self-sabotage!

2 months have now passed, and i've spent the last week in a flurry of job interviews! It speaks volumes about my confidence levels that i'm now tying my hair right back and flashing big smiles when meeting potential employers. Before surgery I always wore my hair forward to conceal my jawline and could barely look them in the eye as I wondered if they were noticing my underbite and lisp. How nice it is to finally be free of those demons!

So how am I doing two months in? Externally things are almost back to normal; energy levels have been good for some time now, i've started back at the gym and am running again (albeit at a slower speed as my stamina still has some way to go to get back to pre-surgery levels). There is still some puffiness there. It's more prominant in the morning and when i'm very hot, but doesn't appear noticable to other people thankfully. I suspect this is the deep down swelling my surgeon warned me about, he said to expect it to be around for a while.

Internally I have some way to go. The incision wounds are entirely healed over but I have no feeling at all in my upper gums and palate. I'm opening to over 2 finger widths and only get occasional slight twinges of discomfort. Eating is going ok, I can bite into anything soft and chew harder items that are chopped up into small pieces. It's not perfect though, I tried biting through a large chunk of apple a few days ago and couldn't do it - I got a strange sensation of pressure around my entire upper jaw and promptly stopped. No need to rush these things. I've also recently started to floss again, and am finding that some sections of my gums are VERY painful, i'm going to ask my surgeon about this when I see him next week as I suspect it might be due to nerve regeneration. The strangest part of flossing is trying to reach my lower back teeth. You'd think that a few mm of movement wouldn't make much difference but my furthest molars now seem MILES away, my fingers just arn't long enough to reach all the way back there! I've also had occasions when my jaw clicks a little on one side, usually after eating or flossing. The clicking always stops again pretty quickly but is another thing i'd better run by the surgeon next week.

So all is pretty much well! I have one final piece of advice to would-be jaw surgery candidates, which is not to have the monumentally stupid idea of going clay pigeon shooting so soon after jaw surgery (yes, I really did!). I can only attribute it to a moment of madness, as even as I pressed the shotgun tight to my face, thoughts of how much pressure this might put on my recently broken jaws only vaguely crossed my mind. As I fired the shot the gun recoil, of course, sent a HUGE shockwave through my face and I reeled back in horror thinking i'd caused some terrible damage. Thankfully there was no harm done, but Dr H's assistant just shook her head at me and asked what on earth I was thinking when I admitted it during my appointment a few days later. Obviously a bit of work needs doing on the old common sense!