Day 9 - Working from Home

I woke up at 9:15 AM and worked from home all day today - the full 9-5 PM! It felt good to get back some normalcy in my life. I had to lie down a couple of times during the day, once at about 12 PM and then again at 5 PM.

My sinuses were going crazy today. My nose kept dripping of the mucousy-blood mixture. I thought the blood was supposed to stop by Day 10 but today's been the worst day for it. My stitches haven't dissolved either which has me a little concerned too. My upper lip and the right side of my nose kind of stings. Perhaps its a combination of the numbness almost being gone and my wounds healing.

I discovered Rebecca's blog today. I can't believe there's an entire Ortho-blogosphere out there! I wish I knew about it before going into surgery. It sure would have made my life a little easier. For example, there's a more intelligent way then watering down all my meals - the syringe! Not sure how it works but I'm only a handful of days away from getting my elastics taken off now so I'll just man it out.

From reading Rebecca's blog tomorrow might be even worse for pain - "Your jaw is weakest on Day 10". We'll see how it goes...

Day 8 - Oats, Dribbling and Yawning

I got caught up on all my email from work today so I'm hoping I'll be able to put in a full day of work tomorrow - working from home of course.

I still haven't managed to resolve my wedged oat problem. It's really jammed in there and it's super-annoying. I think I'm going to have to live with it.

In other news, for the last 2 days I've been battling a downpour of mucousy-blood mixture from my nose. Alright, it's not quite a downpour but it does make going outside a little bit of an inconvenience. I'm constantly concerned about the state of my nose. Thankfully, I almost have all the feeling on my face back so at least I know when something is starting to dribble down. It's supposed to clear up by day 10 so I'm definitely looking forward to that.

And finally, I'm finding yawning really difficult. Well, it's obviously difficult because my jaws are bound together by elastics but it really hurts to yawn. I couldn't find any mention of how to handle yawning in the booklet my surgeon gave me so hopefully it's not bad for me.

Day 7 - One Week Post-Op

I'm at the one week stage. Yeah me! I think I've been doing quite well. The swelling has reduced, I don't have a lot of numbness and my head isn't as woozy anymore. I don't think I have the strength to get through a day of work though but my eating habits have been quite alright.

I have 5 meals a day and some of the meals I've had over the last few days include:

• oatmeal
• tomato soup
• cream of mushroom soup
• pea soup
• mashed potatoes
• spinach curry
• channa masala
• malai kofta
  
• baked beans
• mushy fish
• banana shake
• strawberry shake
• Chocolate Boost

I did have a bit of an eating catastrophe today. My Dad was on an important phone call so I didn't want to fire up the blender and decided to have un-blended oatmeal for breakfast. The eating was fine but I managed to get an oat wedged between my splint and the roof of my mouth. It's been stuck there all day and there's no way for me to get the thing out. It kind of concerns me because it may stay there for 4 more weeks! Hopefully I won't develop any disease or cavities due to 4 weeks of wedged oats.

Day 6 - On A Mission, James Bond Style

I woke up this morning with a purpose. I want to start working from home later this week since doing nothing at home is just killing me. I'm also targeting next Monday or even as early as Friday this week to be back at the office. I need to work on improving my speech though.

I've come to the realization that others can't understand me when I use words with the letter 's' in them. I just can't pronounce the 's' properly' with the splint in my mouth. So I'm replacing my 's' with a 'sh' and having more success (or rather shuccshesh). I like to think I sound like Sean Connery now. If it's good enough for James Bond, it's good enough for me!

I also ventured outdoors for the first time today. Took a walk in the courtyard behind my apartment building. Weather was really nice and 15-20 minutes of walking tired me out. Hopefully the extra activity will help me get some better sleep tonight.

Day 5 - A Hobo No More

Yet another night of bad sleep. It felt like I hadn't slept when I woke up this morning. I kept waking up every hour through the night and I must have had the lightest sleep known to man!

After having a couple of miserable days and more bad sleep, today turned out a lot better. I got out of the apartment for the first time in days. Ok, it was only down the hall to the laundry room but it was still something. And I shaved for the first time. Shaving felt kind of weird with the numbness and all but at least I don't look like a complete hobo now.

I was all excited for dinner today since I was going to have mushy fish but it didn't really taste that good. I think the texture turned me off a little. Oh yeah, and I've been meaning to mention my love for fruit shakes for the last 2 days but I keep forgetting. Banana is my favourite and Strawberry a close second. I can't wait for the summer to really kick in - a cool Coffee shake with Pralines & Cream ice-cream will be pure bliss!

Day 4 - More Misery

Another night of poor sleep. This time, I got really uncomfortable with my sleeping arrangement. I have a soft pillow chair with 2 pillows on it but I had to fluff and switch the pillows around multiple times through the night.

The day turned out even more miserable than yesterday. I had oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast. Watched another episode of Hereos while icing down my jaws and by the time the episode ended I was hyperventilating. My head feels even woozier than yesterday. Initially I thought the anesthesia hadn't completely worn off but now I'm thinking it's the meds.

I'm starting to get really concerned about this splint and my ability to talk. It's going to be 4-5 weeks until they take it off and it's really hampering my ability to speak. I'm not sure how I'll be able to get back to my regular schedule when I get to work. I usually spend anywhere from 2-4 hours on conference calls so I may be as good as useless.

On a positive note, I'm kind of surprised with how much feeling I have on my face. My left cheek almost has all it's feeling back and my upper lip and right cheek aren't completely numb either. When I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I had absolutely no feeling on parts of my face for 2 months. At this rate, I may have all my feeling back by the end of the first week.

Day 3 - Miserable

I didn't sleep very well at all overnight. The only quality sleep I got was between the hours of 7 AM and 11 AM. I didn't feel terribly uncomfortable so I'm not sure why I couldn't get into a deeper slumber.

Had a pretty miserable day today. I had blended oatmeal for breakfast, took a nap and woke up feeling a little woozy in the head. There isn't a whole lot I can do. Don't really feel like reading and definitely don't have enough energy to be up and about. Fortunately I have about 4 episodes of Hereos, 3 episodes of Desperate Housewives and 2 episodes of Grey's Anatomy PVRed.

Watched a couple of episodes of Heroes which took my mind off things but I got pretty depressed after that. I can't talk very much because of the stupid plastic splint so I just sit there with a grumpy look on my face. Even trying to smile hurts!

Lunch consisted of cream of mushroom soup, had a Chocolate Boost at tea time and mashed potatoes watered down with tomato soup for dinner.

My nose is all crusted up since I no longer have the benefit of the oxygen mask under my chin to moisturize my nasal passage. Q-tips and the Otrivin nasal spray help but it's still feels pretty gunky up there.

I guess the one positive is I did finally bathe today. I wasn't sure if I should be going under the shower so I sat in the bath tub with my rubber ducky.

Day 2 - I'm back home!

I slept alright overnight. Woke up a few times as they had to check my vitals every couple of hours and I had to constantly empty my bladder being hooked up to the IV. Perhaps it was all a dream, but there was this really cute nurse that walked in midway through the night. I remember thinking, if only I didn't look like a blowfish... I guess my inability to talk didn't help either!

I wasn't feeling very much pain. I had told my surgeon the day before that I was a 2/10 on the pain scale so they didn't give me any morphine overnight. Visiting hours didn't start until 2:00 PM so there wasn't very much I could do. They gave me some kind of milky breakfast gruel and orange juice in the morning. I had the orange juice and a little bit of the breakfast gruel, but didn't feel like having much more. I wasn't nauseated which was a good sign and my nasal passage was pretty clear, albeit somewhat crusty.

They let me get up and take a walk in the hallway dragging my IV around. It felt good to be up and walking. Slept a little more, had tomato soup for lunch. Dad came by a little after 2:00 PM. Talked to him for a bit but I think he was mainly just nodding and pretending he understood what I was saying. For some reason, I've been salivating like crazy. It must be due to the plastic splint they put in my mouth. In any case, the combination of not brushing, breakfast gruel, tomato soup and lots of saliva did not make for a good aftertaste!!

My surgeon came by at around 4:00 PM and asked the nurses how I was doing. They said I had been a model patient. He took a quick look at my pumpkin sized face and said I could go home. My surgeon thought I hadn't swollen up a lot but the right side of my face seemed huge to me and for some reason the left side of my lower jaw was swollen too even though he didn't do any work there.

Anyway, it was good to be home. I had pea soup for dinner, watched a little TV and it was lights out for me.

Day 1 - Surgery Day

Woke up at 5:00 AM in the morning. Got the hospital just before 7:00 AM. They checked my vitals and I was fit for surgery! Then they made me wait around for an hour, gave me my robe, more waiting and finally at about 8:45 AM, I waved goodbye to my Dad and in I went on my stretcher.

Then they made me wait a little more in the hallway. My surgeon came by and told me he would have to do a multi-piece surgery and have to widen my upper jaw by 1 cm. I guess that's a lot! He also mentioned I would have a plastic splint in my mouth for 4-5 weeks. I wasn't thrilled about that!

I agreed but that's when it hit me. I was about to get my jaw sawed into pieces and have it re-screwed together again. Yikes! What if something went wrong? I would look like a freakshow! Or even worse, what if I woke up mid-way through it?!? Fortunately none of that happened... but at that point I just wanted them to give me the anesthesia and knock me out.

Oh yeah, and to make things worse, I heard the nurses talking about some equipment not working in OR 4. I figured as long as I wasn't in OR 4, I was ok. Then I got wheeled in... to OR 4!!!

They hooked up the IV, started giving me the anesthesia and I no longer had a care in the world. The last thing I remember telling the nurses was I would love to take a vacation to Greece and meet all kinds of attractive women. I'm sure they had a chuckle!

3-4 hours later, I woke up. I remember feeling better than I expected. I had my face wrapped in an ice-pack, a tube to drain blood from my nose and an oxygen mask on my face. The person beside me was groaning and moaning in pain. I couldn't turn my head to see what was going on and they wheeled me out as soon as I woke up so I didn't get to find out either.

They moved me to a Constant Observation Unit (COU), which is kind of like ICU but for patients that aren't as critical - I just needed to be watched in case I had trouble breathing due to nasal congestion and the like. The rest of the day was spent sleeping. I have recollections of my Dad and my surgeon coming by. I gave them the thumbs up and tried mumbling to them but that's really all there was to the rest of the day.

Day 0 - The Day Before Surgery

This is the first in a series of posts that will describe my post-op experiences from orthognathic surgery. I'm currently at Day 9 but I'll recall what I was going through as best as I can.

Before I get started, I've got to credit Rebecca for the idea. I always intended to show a progression of photos but her blog inspired me to do the day by day commentary.


-- Flashback to Day 0 - The Day Before Surgery --

Surprisingly I'm not very nervous and even somewhat excited to have surgery. I've known for the best part of 10 years I would need surgery to fix my open bite and this is the last big hurdle before the home stretch. Can't wait to have my jaw broken to bits, reconstructed and be back to normal in 8 weeks! And hopefully the braces will come off 2-4 months after that.

So what did I eat before regressing to a liquid and soft food diet?
- A Schezwan Chicken Sandwich for lunch
- Leftover pasta and a potato curry for dinner

What a waste of normal chewing force!

L.A. - Here I come!

I've been pestering my manager to send me on a trip somewhere and he's caved (or I like to believe so). I pretty much grew up on a plane - my Dad worked for an array of airlines through his career and well, I got to travel a lot when I was younger! Yeah, I know I'm spoiled but I just love experiencing new sites and sounds. And it's awesome that I can do it for work reasons too now.

On my very first business trip, I get to go to Los Angeles! I leave on Tuesday and return Thursday evening so that won't leave much time for checking out the city but that's OK - I already did the touristy trip back in '99.

Despite the short stay (and the work) I'm sure I'll have a blast!

And since traveling is on the cards, here are some useful Travel Tools courtesy of The Man From Mars.

I'm back!

Wow... I can't believe I took a 3 month break from blogging!

I can't promise I'll keep posting regularly but it's worth a shot. So, what's happened in the last 3 months?

• I went on my vacation to India. I wrote a blog post while I was there but wasn't connected at the time so it's going to have to be added at a later point in time. I had an awesome time while I was gone but it was way too short.

• Work's been crazy and I find I usually have very little left in the tank when I get home. I don't regret my move to Project Management though. I'm having the time of my life (or something like that...)!

• I upped a level in Seikido (it's the type of Martial Arts I'm learning). I'm all the way up to a lowly green belt now. Woohoo!

• While I'm talking about Seikido, I competed in a tournament a few weeks ago and took away 2nd for my pattern and tied 3rd for sparring (it was only with 4 people so not that impressive!).

• I was on the organizing team for this year's PMI - South Western Ontario Chapter Annual Symposium and it went off great on May 3rd. We made a wad of cash to make up for the massive hole from last year! I couldn't be happier for our success.

That's all folks!