Day 3

I thought about making individual posts for the days I skipped, but to be honest, I was either asleep or drugged through most of it. Yesterday was my first day home and it. was. awful. I wanted so badly to be back in the hospital with medicine on demand and have a bed I could control. But instead my mom woke me up every 6 hours for ibuprofen and randomly inbetween for food or other various medicines. Yesterday I used my pain killers throughout the day but today the ibuprofen has been good to me. My chin is still mostly numb, but I get what I call little "zingers," there's little shocks where the nerves are trying to heal themselves. The swelling isn't much worse today than it was yesterday, but there is new bruising. It's on the lower right side of my jaw and also across my chest. I was able to get up and take a bath today as well, which seems like a small victory, but it is a victory none the less. Eating is hard to keep up with, calories are hard to consume in liquid form but my mom and grandma are helping me a lot. I apologize for how unflattering the pictures are, but this is what I look like :)

I've made little charts of my various states so I'll include yesterdays as well.

Day 2:
Pain: 6-7, very annoying
Nauseous: Yes
Headache: Yes
Emotions: Sad
Tired: Extremely
Craves: Pico de gallo, chinese food, queso

Day 3:
Pain: 5-6, I can feel the nerves trying to heal themselves
Nauseous: Occasionally
Headache: Only on sides
Emotions: Frustrated
Tired: A couple naps were needed
Craves: Whataburger, Funyuns

Day 0

Hi friends! Sorry it's been a few days, but hopefully my moms Facebook updates have kept y'all satisfied until I could post again. Day 0 is the day of surgery, I'll post a couple pics from before I went in, but besides that I don't remember much. I remember coming out of surgery and being in recovery waiting for a room and my pain being an 8, and then I remember them giving me liquid Motrin which did not make me feel good but then my pain went to a 5/6. I was vaguely aware that after surgery my face wasn't as big as I thought it would have been, but I also remember feeling it getting bigger. Overall, surgery was a success, there were no complications and everything went according to plan!

This is going back to surgery, they had just given me my IV and I don't remember this trip at all.

Right out of surgery I started crying for my mom, and then when my mom got there I wanted my dad.

They finally switched my medications bringing me from an 8 to a 5/6 on the pain scale, and then we waited here until my room was ready!

My Story

Hi everyone! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Anya and I am 20 years old. I'm going to be using this blog to update y'all on my surgery and post-surgery progress. Before all of that, let me share some of my story and how I got here!

I got my braces and an expander put on when I was in the 8th grade. The expander stayed in for about 6 months, and when they took it out I had developed a pretty severe under bite. I remember walking out of the office crying because my bite wasn't the same and my teeth weren't touching correctly. We quickly found a new and highly recommended orthodontist who informed me that I would eventually have to have jaw surgery. I think my first appointment with Dr. Taylor (my jaw surgeon) was about two years later. We had my wisdom teeth extracted and had my first consultation with him when we were informed that out insurance wouldn't cover the surgery. Without insurance we wouldn't be able to afford it so I opted just to have my braces removed and work with it. Well, my senior year of high school I started working at Starbucks and was able to get insurance that would cover it! So the long process began and I had to go back and have my braces put on for another year, and then had to have another consultation with Dr. Taylor. I saw him at the beginning of April, and then at the beginning of May they told me they could do the surgery June 5th!! SO soon! Of course I am EXTREMELY excited and grateful that I'm able to even have this surgery but as it gets closer (4 days!!) I'm also getting nervous. A lot of factors go into making sure the surgery goes well and that the results are what we're aiming for. I'm going to try to keep this blog updated regularly so you can keep up with my journey, as well as see the progress I'm making while healing! Below is a picture that Dr. Taylor's team took to predict what I might look like after surgery, it's pretty cool to see the change!

(The left is me currently, the right is what they predict I will look like)