Day 7 - One week post-op!

Can't believe it's been one whole week already!  My summary of the first week...

• Pain has been fine, it's been completely manageable with the pain killers and towards the end of the week I've been taking them less and less
• Swelling - it's annoying and I'm impatient for it to go but it's ok
• Numbness - only my top gums and roof of my mouth are completely numb, everything else has some feeling but I can feel it coming back even more as I keep getting tingly cheeks
• Eating - started off with a syringe, but have even worked up to knife and fork!  As long as I take my front bands off (which I've been told I'm allowed to do) I can fit the front of a fork in my mouth.  I can still only eat things that I can mush with my tongue though, no chewing yet!
• Weight loss - I've gone from 7 stone 10 lbs to 7 stone 4 lbs, so I'm trying to pile on the pounds from now on!
• Appearance - I'm starting to love my new appearance!  I don't want to speak too soon, but I've got what I wanted - my chin in the right place and a smaller looking nose.  I hope my smile will be what I want too, but I'll have to wait for that one!

And some questions for post-oppers...

• How long will I have bands on for?  Do you just keep having different configurations until the braces come off?
• Do the stitches all dissolve by themselves?
• How long did you sleep upright for?
• How well should I be cleaning my teeth at this point?
• Does putting ice on your face help the swelling go down or does it just numb the pain?

Today I went to the hospital to see my orthodontist for the first time since my op.  She said that everything looked really good and my bite was coming together well.  I asked about my concerns about my midlines being off, but she acted like she hadn't even noticed and when she looked she said it's less than a millimetre so I shouldn't worry and that it can be fixed... I'm still not convinced lol.

She put some new bands on with one going from my back tooth on the bottom to my canine on each side, and then two box configurations at the front.  Here's a pic of my new bands, I've drawn on black lines to show where the bands are:

She told me to change all the bands once a day because they lose their elasticity.  Well, whilst I was eating dinner one of the back bands snapped so I decided to put the new bands on when I'd finished.  This turned out to be the most frustrating thing EVER.  It literally took about an hour.  I had my mum shining a torch in my mouth, while I tried to hook the elastic over the back hook, but the problem is that the elastic is so thick that it's thicker than the hook I'm trying to attach it to so it just slides over it!  To make matters worse, I've got a stitch in my cheek that sticks out over the bit I'm trying to hook it onto.  Eventually I just got so angry that I just shoved my finger in there with the little stick the elastic is on, and just had to hold the elastic over the hook with my finger, and eventually it went on, but it was bloody difficult!  And now I've got to do this everyday!  Hopefully it will get easier with practice.

These new bands are much tighter than the last ones, and now I'm worried that I've put them back on wrong and I'm pulling it all in the wrong directions.  With the last ones I could open my teeth a little with the bands on, but there's no chance of that with the new bands.

The hospital also said that my swelling is what would be expected at this stage, so that's good.  I've also decided that I'm going to lie back a little more tonight, because my ortho just said to me 'Are you sleeping with your head inclined a little bit?', so she's obviously not expecting me to be sitting up completely, and when I laid back on the orthodontist's chair it didn't make my face feel weird.  So I'll give it a go tonight and let you know how I get on!

After I went to the hospital I went round my sister's house so that me and my mum could babysit my nephew for a couple of hours.  I was worried that my nephew would look at me weirdly and be scared of me!  But to be honest I think he's too young to notice things like that because he's only 8 months old.  It was just hard because I couldn't smile at him or talk to him with an expressive baby talk face.  And I didn't want to hold him because he has a habit of hitting you in the face when you do!

Here are my Day 7 pictures.  The swelling is definitely going down... just very slowly...