Yesterday was my 7 week check up with Dr. Keith. It doesn't feel like 7 weeks have past by! Everything seemed to just happen with lightning speed. My original back to work date is coming up on Monday which is exciting. I've already been back to work for 3 weeks so it'll be nice to really get back into the groove of things.
As I said, yesterday was the 7 week check up which went very well. Everyone at the office knows who I am so when they see me they always ask me how i'm doing and tell me how great I look. Dr. Keith had a resident with him when he saw me and he was taking notes so I'm assuming he's newly out of school or doing a rotation in maxillofacial surgery. He was very quiet. They asked me to take out my elastics since they wanted to accurately measure my open bite range. Dr. Keith and the resident were very impressed with how fast I took the elastics out! He said that it's amazing how good some people get at it so I must be one of those people.
We chatted for a few minutes, nothing crazy. I wasn't in too much pain, just generally sore. These elastics make me sore more often than not. It's nothing that tylenol or advil won't cure. It usually happens after eating. Dr. Keith recommended heat, he said it would soothe the joint area and help to promote healing. He gave me the go ahead to eat normally again, which means that I can officially come off a soft food diet! Yay! VERY exciting! I'm not sure if my jaw could handle really hard food just yet but he said the more I use it, the easier it'll become. Since I'll be eating harder foods, I'm going to start using the heat after meals. He didn't want to recommend heat until now because my swelling is finally starting to settle down. I can also use a straw again full time and was completely taken off of nasal precautions. WAHOO.
However, I did get a small amount of bad news. I complained to Dr. Keith about my right nostril. It's difficult to blow my nose on that side and I still have a hard time breathing fully through that side. It's also sensitive enough that it's started to bother me a bit. I showed Dr. Keith and he said that the right nostril opening is smaller than the left side. He said that it looks like the cartilage must have slipped either during surgery or sometime after. Either way, he said that it would need to be addressed. There is a chance that I may need to have another surgery in order to fix this issue. (-_-) To be honest, it made me extremely depressed. Here I am thinking that I'm completely finished with this whole surgery business and then he tells me that I'm maybe/probably going to need another one to fix this new issue. Luckily, since it happened because of the last surgery, it would be covered as a continuation of care. And the recovery time this time around is a lot shorter, around 1 week. And it would be a quick day surgery procedure. I still have a small amount of swelling on my right side so he wants to wait until that goes away before he makes any recommendations. I just hope I don't get sick or anything cause that would make this whole nose breathing thing even worse, hahaha.
Since I'm finished with the oral portion of my surgery, I've updated the tabs at the top to include before and after photos. I received my before photos from Dr. Keith yesterday and was able to easily upload them here for people to view. I haven't taken any professional after photos yet because Dr. Klein is waiting to take those for when I am closer to finishing. I will post them as soon as I receive them. Feel free to check out the before and after tab above. There are x-ray images up there so please check them out if you are interested.
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