Guess what....?!?!?!?!

The palate expander is GONE! Outta here! I saw my orthodontist yesterday and she was quite pleased with how well my bottom teeth looked and with how much space the expander gave her to work with. She also put on top braces (SO EXCITING!!!!) so I now have a mouth full of bling. I was so happy that I almost started happy crying in the chair. 

My jaw and teeth are pretty sore today. Along with saying goodbye to PEA 2.0 and getting the tops put in, I had to take a couple pictures where my lips were stretched back using these plastic grip things. I've used them before and they can be pretty uncomfortable. I've been on a diet of mac n cheese, mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, oatmeal and ice cream for the past day and a half. I'll probably continue on the soft food diet for a few days until my teeth calm down. 

I haven't had time to take any photos (my bailey burrito had surgery today so I've been a nervous wreck!) but I will post them either tonight or tomorrow. My top teeth are pretty jacked now, haha! You can really tell how much smaller my lower jaw is compared to my upper jaw now. I will definitely post some pictures very soon! 

Good News, Bad News

Well, I saw my regular dentist yesterday and he gave me good news! The pain/sensitivity that I'm experiencing is not a cavity and does not require any extra work to that area. That was the great news! He thinks that it's a braces issue. Since my teeth are moving, he thinks that one of the bands on my right side might be irritating the tooth when I chew in certain ways. Maybe the band is pinching a nerve? The bad news is that he couldn't really do anything for me so I'll have to wait until I see the orthodontist (which is a week from today). He didn't want to disrupt anything that she had done (which I completely understand). So I'll just have to wait a week until I see her next.
I did have to get 1 cavity filled (the one in the front that was hiding behind the other tooth). It wasn't a big cavity though so he actually did it without using Novocaine. Oh yea, who's a bad ass! I'm totally hardcore. Haha! It made me pretty happy though since administering the local anesthetic can cost some money and I've already maxed out my dental insurance. So anything else will have to be paid out of pocket (which totally blows, btw). Also, today is the last day turning PEA 2.0 twice a day. Now I go down to once a day until next week!
Just thought I would share, nothing else to really report. As I said, my next orthodontist appointment is a week from today. I will write again in about a week then!

Pea 2.0 and yet another mini-rant

Things have been pretty busy for me this past week. I've had 2 doctor's appointments since Tuesday (both routine, nothing wrong). I'm also on vacation since my college friend is up here visiting for a week. 

Yesterday, I had a routine orthodontist appointment which went a lot better than the one I had a week before. 

Now, I understand that the office is busy and they see a lot of patients. One of the technicians comes up to me with my new palate expander and says, "Ok, let's try this one on and see how it fits." and then has a very confused facial expression when she sees that I already have one installed. It really irritates me because it makes me feel like I'm just another patient that you are working on. It doesn't kill you to take a quick 2 seconds to look at my chart and see what work I've already had done. That way you don't have to go and search for my orthodontist and ask her while she's in with another patient. My orthodontist does a great job of knowing what's going on with my case and just knowing me on a personal level. I don't feel like I should have to tell the technician (who I've been seeing for almost a year now btw) that I already have a palate expander installed. In fact, I think she was the one who helped to install the palate expander the first time! 

Ugh, I'm sure I sound ridiculous. Just wanted to get that off my chest. 

Yesterday though, I got PEA 2.0! Apparently, I found out that I "graduated" to an adult sized palate expander. The one that I had before was so small that it was child sized. So now I have a full sized PEA. And this one sits a lot better on my teeth than the last one. It also is practically flush with the roof of my mouth so I haven't had as much problems with food getting stuck up there like I did before. I've been instructed to amp up my expanding. I turn the key 3 times a day for 1 week, then 2 times a day for 1 week, then once a day until I see my ortho again. The space in between my two front teeth has kind of closed. But that is a good thing! It means all the teeth are moving to accommodate the added room I have now. Since the crowding is so bad, I won't really have a huge space between my two front teeth which makes me happy. Who knows, my teeth might even been pretty straight by the wedding we are attending in October! Very exciting! I also got my bottom wire replaced and some new colored o rings. So my teeth are a little sore today. 

Well, time to go and have more fun on my vacation!

Sarpe Recovery - Day 5

Today was the big day! I had my post-op appointment this morning at 10:30am. My surgeon was happily surprised at how good I looked. My jaw has started to bruise and I was a lovely shade of yellow/green when I had my appointment. However, according to my surgeon, most of his patients who go through the same procedure bruise more heavily than me. He said the bruises will probably become more pronounced within the next couple of days but to just keep using the heat pad to help promote blood circulation. They should slowly start to diminish as I heal.

He told me that I can start to amp up my diet (which makes me very happy). This means I can eat more than ice cream, yogurt and mashed potatoes. My local grocery store had a sale on some really nice looking salmon and wild cod so I think I'll make that tonight to celebrate. Oh man, just thinking about it makes me so hungry!

I was also told that I can now take ibuprofen again. You have no idea how happy I was when he told me that I could start taking the ibuprofen again. Tylenol helps to take the edge off but doesn't even come close to what ibuprofen does. If I want to take the ibuprofen I will have to amp up my diet though because my stomach will be very upset if I take the ibuprofen without eating first.

I am still not allowed to blow my nose or use a straw. I can do both starting next week which is good cause I've been dying for an iced coffee and to be able to blow my nose. I think I can wait a little longer though.

And lastly, the best part, he gave me the ok to go back to work! He told me that it was up to me and how I felt but that if I wanted to go back, he said he was fine with it. He was a little concerned with me over-doing it though so he suggested a modified lite duty. For the first week I'm back, he doesn't want me to do any heavy lifting and to limit my talking on the phone which I'm totally fine with. I work in a pharmacy and there's a bunch of stuff I can do without answering the phone or lifting heavy stuff so I'm not concerned. I have another appointment tomorrow morning at the hospital where I will get cleared to go back to work. I can't officially work until occupational health clears me. It's a little bit of over-kill but I understand why they do it. Patient safety comes first and they need to make sure that I'm well enough to work so that my patients leave happy and healthy. I'll just have to talk to my boss about coming back early and hopefully she'll have something for me to do.

There was a slight hiccup with the orthodontist though. Apparently, I was supposed to also have a post-op appointment with my orthodontist. When I was last there, I asked about when I should see her again, and was told 6 weeks after my surgery. So that's what I scheduled. When I told Dr. Keith that, he said that there must have been some kind of mistake because I should have had an appointment to see her 1-2 weeks after my surgery. It doesn't really surprise me, the people at the front office can be super spacey. And they have a lot of new staff that aren't that familiar with schedules. But he called my orthodontist and fixed everything. Now I have an orthodontist appointment Friday morning at 8am. I'm not looking forward to driving into Boston on a Friday morning but I will do it.

Anyway, I feel a lot better and am looking forward to getting back to work.

SARPE Surgery write up

So, after sleeping a bit and resting, I finally feel ok enough to write a more in depth account of my surgery.

My surgery was scheduled for 11:30am but I arrived at the hospital at 9am. Once I was called in, I had a nurse do my vital signs (take my blood pressure, temp, and pulse) and then I changed into the very stylish johnny and robe. I even had to remove my underwear which was kinda horrifying! I made sure to wear natural cotton undies but they still had me remove them!
After getting registered and changing, I spoke with a really sweet nurse. She asked me all the regular questions. Name, date of birth, what surgery I was having done, meds I was taking, ect. I finally broke down and asked the nurse about the underwear situation. I really didn't want to go into surgery without SOMETHING protecting my modesty. Plus, I was freezing! The nurse assured me that it's just a precaution because they want the OR to be very sterile. She gave me some PJ pants to wear in lieu of underwear and I was so happy! Definitely better than going without. After that was done, they brought in my hubby to sit with me. By that time, it was around 10am. I was able to watch the first half of Let's Make a Deal. Soon after, I said goodbye to my hubby and was transported to the pre-op area.

Now MGH takes cleanliness and everything being 100% sterile very seriously. I went through 2 check points before going into the operating room. Day surgery pre-op where I got registered. I also had to change out of my clothes and leave any other belongings there. Then I was transported to the OR pre-op. What sucked is that my hubby couldn't come into the OR with me. He had to say goodbye at that registration point. Hopefully since the next surgery is way more major, I'll see if he'll be able to stay with me until the last possible second. 

In the OR, I was able to watch TV however, I had to leave my glasses and all valuables back with my hubby. So I was unable to actually really see anything on the screen, lol. Once in the OR, I met with my surgeon, the surgery team, anesthesiologist and nurses. I had my IV put in along with all the good drugs. If you are at all concerned with the procedure or drugs they will be giving you, speak up and tell your nurse, surgeon and anesthesiologist. They will be able to answer all your questions. I was concerned about the narcotics making me nauseous and vomiting after. If you know you have a weak stomach, request a scopolamine patch (it helps against motion sickness and nausea). I got one and it definitely helped.

After that, I was brought into the operating room and put to sleep. My surgery was roughly 45 minutes long. I went in on time but I guess it took me a long time to wake up from the anesthesia because I don't really remember anything until I got to the post op area which was around 3:30pm. My nurse, Joan, was just wonderful. She was an older lady and was very motherly. She was the perfect nurse and I couldn't have asked for anyone better. We didn't leave the hospital until 5pm. The only thing that sucked is that we left at the height of rush hour. I don't know what was worse, leaving at rush hour and getting stuck in traffic or not eating all morning and getting home late.

After the traffic, I went home and immediately lied down. My hubby and brother in law went to the pharmacy for me to get all my drugs along with some other stuff I needed. After that, I just iced my face periodically and relaxed. I even ate a bowl of chicken broth. It helped a lot.  They pumped me full of fluids while in the OR so I've been peeing like a racehorse since yesterday!

I am still very swollen. I've been icing my face constantly. My nose is very sore. I can't blow my nose or sneeze with my mouth closed for awhile. I can't wait until tomorrow when I'll be able to hopefully eat more solid food again.

Here's another photo, you can tell that the swelling as gone down dramatically since yesterday. Under my upper lip and near my cheek are where the stitches are.

Day 1 Recovery

Today at 5pm I will be turning the key in PEA for the first time. I'm sure it'll suck but I'll hopefully write about that tomorrow!

Meet P.E.A.!

So, not a whole lot to say. Palate Expander still sucks. I hate typing out palate expander every single time I want to talk about it though. So, from now on, I will now refer to it as PEA (palate expander appliance)! Haha, I'm so clever! LOL.
Food is slowly getting easier to navigate. Talking is still hard. It almost sounds as if I'm deaf. It's a very strange experience. I'll have moments of clarity where my voice sounds like it used to. But then, all of a sudden, I have to say a word that I didn't anticipate being a difficult word so I sorta kinda just spit it out. It's almost like I'm tone deaf on certain words. Very odd and weird. I don't know how it sounds to other people, but to me it sounds like I was deaf at some point.
I've also learned to eat with my head tilted slightly back. Not sure how that will work once the surgery happens and I have stitches but I'm sure I'll manage somehow.

Now, I'm sure some of you are curious what PEA looks like. Luckily, I have a hubby who's willing to take some photos for me, even if they are slightly awkward.

Now, PEA is obviously the spider looking metal contraption. It is hooked onto 4 teeth and cemented in with glue (that blue stuff around those teeth is the glue). This picture really shows how much crowding I have. You can see the front 4 teeth are really crowded. Once I have surgery, I will be able to crank PEA and make my jaw wider. In order to make my jaw wider, I will need to crank PEA with a special key. My orthodontist instructed me that I can't loose it because the company only makes one per person. And I must bring it with me to surgery because they will start the cranking process while I'm under the anesthesia. If you look at the photo above, you can see a small slit in the very center. You take the key, insert it into the slit and you can watch it grow wider and wider. After awhile, my teeth will start to spread and I will actually have a space in between my front teeth! It's hard to believe since my teeth have been crowded for so long. 

This "key" is quite an expensive tool. It's 95% made of flimsy plastic with 5% curved metal. It almost looks like someone unbent a paper clip and glued it onto a piece of plastic. HAHA. I've had PEA before so I was not surprised with how flimsy the key looked. But it's a lot stronger than it looks. I guess one of her patients forgot the key at home on surgery day and she had to rush over with someone else's key. How someone in the OR couldn't just fabricate something on the fly blows my mind but whatever. I've been told that it must remain with me surgery day so I'll follow my instructions and bring it on surgery day.

I guess on surgery day, Dr. Keith will take my key and crank PEA at least 4 or 5 times to get my mouth started. Then, once I am in recovery, someone will instruct my hubby on how to crank PEA since I won't be able to. I could when I was a kid but I didn't have stitches or a broken palate haha. 

It's very strange but I just realized today that I don't have any more doctor's appointments or phone appointments. Surgery is my next appointment! O.O!! Holy cow!

New appliance installed!

Well, it's official! I've gotten my palate expander and it sucks! I'm a little sore and I'm having a hard time talking. I've been told that it takes a few days to get used to the appliance. The brackets on my two eye teeth have been bothering me the most. They stick out quite a lot and rub the inside of my lips. Thankfully, I've got lots of wax. But I am also drooling like crazy.

Eating food is so difficult now! I brush after eating ANYTHING. I even swish my mouth with mouthwash after drinking certain things (like smoothies and junk). Eating kinda sucks now which is really sad cause I love food. ;_;

Only 182 days until I can loose this appliance and eat/talk like a normal person again. (AND YES, I've started a count down!)

Another one bites the dust

Things have been very hectic! We've been going with the flow and preparing for my surgery when BAM, life kicked us where it hurts.

Last Monday night (roughly two hours after my spacer part II dilemma), my husband was playing soccer with some friends when he got hurt. He ended up tearing his achilles tendon in his right leg. We had to rush to the hospital and suddenly our lives got a whole lot more complicated. We made an appointment to see an orthopedic specialist (the next day) and he confirmed our worst fears. His achilles was torn and pretty badly. He recommended surgery and soon. They were able to fit him in for surgery the following Friday.
I've been preparing for my surgery for months, I can't imagine being told, "Yea, you need surgery. Lets do it on Friday." Unreal. My hubby is a trooper cause I would have been a hot mess.
Friday comes and we go in for surgery. Luckily, I didn't have to miss work because he came to my hospital and had his surgery. By the time he got out of the OR, my shift was over. The best part? My husband is one of those people who is VERY HILARIOUS when coming off anesthesia. Since I work there, I was able to check up on him in the PACU (which the nurses don't typically allow in PACU cause their patients can turn critical very quickly if something goes wrong). After I checked in and said hi, I left to let him fully wake up.
The next time I saw him, he was sitting up at the day surgery recovery. He saw me and his face lit up. After I sat down next to him, he started humming and then busted out some awesome rap lyrics. I knew I should have come in with my phone on record. Would have made for an awesome youtube video. Now he is recovering and being a typical pain in the ass patient, haha! He came out of surgery in a splint because of swelling. But last Thursday, they took that off, checked his stitches and put him in a hard cast.
I was amazed because the incision is much larger than I thought it would be. I figured 2 maybe 2 1/2 inches max but he's got a good 4 inches of stitches. He didn't just tear his achilles, he also shredded it as well. The shredding carried very far up his leg. The doctor said that it's the worst shredding of a tendon that he's ever seen (great, should have known that don wouldn't do anything half-assed! haha). So now, he's in the hard cast until June 12th when he'll be fitted for a walking boot. He'll be stuck in the walking boot for a minimum of 6 weeks.

Don's bright orange cast to match his bright orange hair!

Now, since it was his right foot, he hasn't been able to drive. His coworker lives nearby and has to drive by our house in order to get to work so he's been picking Don up and driving him in when his schedule works out. Unfortunately, we aren't sure when Don will be able to drive again. And he was supposed to be my "reliable person" to drive me to and from the hospital on my own surgery day. Hopefully, he'll be able to drive by June 19th but if he can't, we have a few other people who could potentially drive us into Mass General.

In other news, tomorrow is the big day where I get my appliance placed. I'm hoping that it's smaller than it was when I was a kid. I'm sure this will now increase my 15 minute brushing and flossing ritual to closer to 20 minutes now, haha. Although I do have to say that I will be very happy to be able to floss my upper teeth again. Not flossing because of the spacers makes me feel like my mouth is never fully clean.

Well, tomorrow is just another chapter in this journey. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Kinda stupid but that's how I'm trying to look at it. :D
More to come (hopefully) tomorrow. I make no promises that I won't be a giant whiny baby though!

Spacer dilemma

Well, it's finally happened! I had a slight braces malfunction yesterday. And it only took 24 hours for it to happen, haha! Not a huge big deal, but one of my spacers on my top jaw popped out last night while we were hanging out with some friends. It was on my left side and I'm pretty sure it was the very back molar. I'm just happy that I felt it and spit it out before I swallowed it!

Unfortunately, I don't really have the time to put the spacer back in until Wednesday. I have to work Monday and Tuesday from 7am-3:30pm. And Monday after work, I have a dentist appointment at 4pm. I might as well go to the orthodontist on Wednesday when I have a day off work. That way, I'm not rushing around like a crazy person trying to run to an appointment right after work.

After the spacers were placed, my jaw was ok. But later that evening my jaw started to hurt quite a bit. After the spacer popped out, my jaw felt a little better (uh...no duh!). But nothing to worry about, I've got 3 weeks-ish before the appliance goes in and that's plenty of time to get the spacer replaced and do it's thing.

Surgeries and Next Steps

Yesterday, I went to see Dr. Keith (my oral surgeon) to talk about how screwed up my jaw is and what needs to be done to fix it. Don came with me because I would have been a hot mess without him. He really kept me from not bursting into tears and hyperventilate.

Tip: If you are going to any kind of important meeting, bring someone who you 100% trust. They will help to keep a level head and maybe might ask questions that you didn't think of. 

After talking about my jaw and about the results of the work up I did in January, Dr. Keith told me that I will require 2 surgeries. He told me that I have 2 problems.

Problem #1 : My upper jaw is too narrow. This is why my top teeth are so crowded. They don't have anywhere to move to!
Problem #2 : My upper jaw does not meet my lower jaw in the correct place. This puts strain and pressure on my jaw joints. It also makes chewing very difficult.

If left uncorrected, my jaw joints will become inflamed (again) and could potentially lead to bone loss in my jaw joints. This bone loss could cause me to not be able to open and close my mouth anymore. Basically, I wouldn't be able to eat solid food or talk without extreme pain. For that reason alone, I've decided to get both surgeries done.

The first surgery is known as Surgical Assisted Rapid Palatal Expansion (or SARPE). This surgery will widen my jaw to give my teeth the space they need to become straight. This will require day surgery at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Because I'm an adult, my jaw has stopped growing. This makes it really difficult for my orthodontist to move my teeth to make them straight. In order to do this, my oral surgeon will have to cut into my upper palate; one spot in between my top front teeth underneath my nose and near my cheek bones. It will be done from inside my mouth so I will have those lovely dissolving stitches. I've been told to expect to be out of work for 10-15 days. I've also been told that I'll be pretty uncomfortable for the first week. I'll have to sleep sitting up for a little while and won't be able to eat solid food for awhile after.

I'm not going to lie, I was really disappointed when I found out about the 2nd surgery. I've been resigning myself to this huge surgery and then BAM! I'm told that I need an additional surgery. It really sucks. When you are expecting one thing and then are told another, it can really play with your confidence. It made me have second thoughts about this whole process.

Thank goodness I have a really awesome support system. My family and friends have all been great throughout my journey. And I couldn't do this without my rock, my partner and best friend. I'm proud to call you my other half and my husband. Don, I love you more than anything. Thank you for always being there for me and making me laugh. The laughter is what makes me forget all my worries and to keep pushing on. Again, I couldn't go through this without you.

Since I'm going to be going through a lot in the next couple weeks, I'll hopefully be able to post more. My next dental appointment is March 5th where I will be getting my top braces fitted. And I think we will be starting the process of getting my appliance made. More on that to come!