I said I was going to bare all, but I lied – nobody had the nerve of taking pics in days 0 and 1, so here is the first one:
Not nice, I agree, but my lips have already halved in size. I still don’t control them, but I almost control my tongue, so feeding is still a strenuos affair, but at least I can accomplish it on my own – liquids only, of course !
The stuff you almost see in my mouth is a whole range of paraphernalia designed to accomplish the only true challenge of this operation, which is the perfect aligning of the bite. The jaw muscles are the strongest we have in our body, and as I will show tomorrow, the jaw connection with the skull was not damaged or anything, retaining its full formidable strength: it is therefore imperative that the bite closes as perfectly as possible, always a delicate task when you move it however slightly from the position Mother Nature developed for it during the growth (even the impaired one I had) the body naturally underwent, Failure to do this would result in all sorts of ailments, severe headaches, muscular pains requiring extensive after-op orthognatic care, all things I understandably would like to avoid..
But you cannot put the face in a cast, so doctors graft two metal crowns to the base of your gums, tying them to the tooth bases; the purpose of these crowns is to offer a range of sturdy metal hooks among which you can string elastic bands (I was lucky, some poor devil needs to be completely tied up with metal wire); the bands clamp down the mouth in the preordered position closing it on a preformed plastic bite who protects the teeth from grinding on each other, but even four (and at that point I am wearing six) bands are not enough to prevent you from opening you mouth; this is how strong your muscles are there!
Obviously, to perform their task, the metal crown hooks must slightly protrude from the gum surface, mercilessly scraping the already battered inside of your lips every time you move them. One more unpleasant feeling, which gets worse with time.
Nose looks and feels significantly thinner in the upper part. this is the combined effect of the septoplasty plus turbinate removal – the “nose job” the doctors were talking about: compared with the rest it is nothing but it sure helps me big time.
