Surgery Day!

If you have a queasy stomach, you may not want to watch this. Not that it's gross, but someone suctions out my mouth about 5 secs into video. It just sounds kind of gross. At this point I felt fairly comfortable. Before surgery my biggest fear was having so much drainage and packing in my sinuses that I would not be able to breathe. I was pleased to find out that everything was just fine. I had blood drainng somewhat down my throat (at least it felt like it, who knows, with all the meds I had on board!) Me and morphine did not get along to well, so after a couple of tries ending in episodes of puking, we ended that relationship. Torodol and I did fine. I only had 4 doses during the 24 hours they had me in the short stay surgery unit. Took Zofran for the nausea, Oxycodone eilixir after I left the hospital.

 When I look back on these videos and photos, I am amazed at how cleaned up I am. I imagine there was a good deal of blood involved in this surgery, but the nurses had me extremely clean. Being an RN myself, I know good nursing when I see it. I had absolutely no signs of blood or anything, on  my gown, in my nose, though I did find a little in my hair, but way in the back!

My CNAs were fantastic. Ice around the clock, up and down for trips to the bathroom, my SCD's in place (AND turned on!), fresh water with syringe in it for drinking and another cupful for rinsing out my suction device that was pinned to my gown for my convenience. They really took good care of me. My husband was by my side the entire time. I felt a little bad for him having to sleep in that awful chair/cot thing, but he said it wasn't that bad. After all, hadn't he done this sort of thing with me 6 times already when I was having babies? True that. He's a good guy.

I had my mouth bound tightly together with elastic bands that the surgeon said he would remove when he comes in to check on  me. The video was taken after he removed the bands which allowed me to open my mouth like that. In the old days, when they moved the jaw forward they would use a bone graft taken from somewhere else on the body, usually the hip. This required them to wire the jaw shut until all of the bone fused together in a strong bond. Well, now they don''t use bone graft. They just use small surgical plates and screws to join the bone back together. This allows for the jaw to be used immediately and without fear of damage to the surgical site.
I began to use my white board to write a question for the Dr. and he told me to put it away and start to talk right away. Once the bands were off, he wanted me to eat some soft foods before I left the hospital to make sure that I could swallow properly.
Right out of the shoot, he wanted me to use my jaw and begin my healing journey. I liked that. I felt like I could be proactive and start exercising my new face into good working order.

I look just a little bit crazy here so I'm thinking it was the morphine. If anything negative I would say about the hospital stay, it would be that I wished I could've had something other than just Torodol. I know that I did get a few doses of Morphine, but I really could've used some OxyCodone or something while I was there. I had Oxy elixir waiting for me in the hotel room but that wasn't ordered by the dr. for me in the hospital, so they couldn't give me any. I went from 1 a.m. until about 9 a.m. without any pain meds. I also got a good IV push of Decadron (given VERY slowly diluted in 2 - 10 ml syringes of saline... Which still made me puke!)