Week 4-5 Before and After

It's 37 days since my jaw surgery! Coming into Week 6 feels great. Last week was exciting, because I saw my surgeon and my orthodontist. The pic on the left was at Day 31 after a Bobbi Brown make-up lesson. Yep there's a bit of help there! Haha. More before/after below.

The orthodontist is still very happy with the bite. There is a bit of an open bite on the molars at the back on the left side, which he acknowledged - he is positive that this can be sorted with the braces and elastics. He says the teeth are very straight and I agree. He is just going to close up a tiny gap between my front teeth which I actually barely noticed until he mentioned it! He's fantastic. I was shocked (and excited) to hear he is hoping to take ALL the braces off at the end of August before I go back to school! This would be 12 weeks post op, and I never thought that would be so quick. At the moment I have braces on the front AND the back of my teeth, so I thought I might get the front ones off but that the back ones would stay for a few more months. He is so happy with the bite though. I said not to let me push him into taking them off! I would obviously love them off but long term retention is the most important thing, of course. I was still pretty numb so he (amusingly) took that opportunity to really tighten the top braces the hell up! Haha. I wonder how much that would have hurt if I wasn't numb.

Jaw God (the surgeon) was on good form when I saw him. He is really pleased with the result. I mentioned the slight overbite and he too is confident it can be easily closed. I explained that my top lip is slooooooooowly gaining some feeling and he said if it's started, he feels confident that this will continue to improve. The area between nose and lips still feels very tight and I keep making hamster faces to try and loosen it up. My speech is still quite distorted and it's hard to tell if this is the frozen upper lip, the braces or the elastics...they're probably quite a winning combination altogether to be fair! He looked at my ears - I thought he would take the stitches out like he did on my jawline (these are invisible now) but he said they would come out on their own. In honesty, I realised maybe I'd been too precious about them and when I gave them a good clean at home, most of the stitches came out. It was only dried blood holding them on. Sexy!!! He also said it's ok to sleep on my side, which had felt weird with my ears and jaw before. AND he gave me permission to start chewing. I have been blender-free for the last 3 days!!! Very exciting.

I'm still make-up free except for the pics here because the numb parts feel like someone else's face, and the parts that are waking up feel a bit tender and sensitive. It's just not worth the hassle! I did, however, treat myself to a free makeup lesson at Bobbi Brown last week when I was on Oxford Street seeing the surgeon. It was weird but fun! So there are a few pics where I look more 'myself' below because normally I am such a make-up lover. My surgeon very sweetly told me "I don't need it!" - I will definitely tone it down after all this but I'm such a girly girl and love a MAC-load of war paint :-)

Food Progress!

Blended food! This is mash made from roasted butternut squash, sweet potato, white potato and cheese, with blended thai green curry with broccoli. Classy! To be honest, this looks disgusting but tasted pretty good.

My first solid meal!! This was a day before my 5-week post-op date. It was a sourdough pizza made with ricotta cheese and extra tomato sauce, so it was pretty sloppy. It wasn't easy....as soon as it was sitting in my lap I became ravenous and suddenly realised just how much I wanted solid food! It was frustratingly slow and you can see that much of the outer part went sadly neglected, but it was still amazing. Happy, happy times, and this gave me the confidence to try other solid food. The next day I ate salmon fillet, cheese sauce, rice and green beans chopped up very small. Yesterday I had chips (fries) with gravy and meat loaf! Loving it! Those 11 pounds I lost are going right back on, haha.

 

Face and Jaw Progress!

 

 Before and After Pictures: BEFORE - right pic WEEK 4 with Bobbi Brown makeup - left pic

 

Large version of same picture: Week 4, with makeup. Nose is wider, face is wider, still bit swollen.

 
Open bite before and Week 4
 
 

Above: smile before (left) and week 4 (right) with make-up

 

Above: side profile showing left side of face. Before (left) and Day 37 (right).

 

 

Above: Week 4 with make-up