Thursday (9 days post-op)

I had a bad night sleeping, tossing and turning all night.  When I woke up, I felt all feverish and had a slight tummy ache.  After some food, I felt a little better.  Mom and I went to UNC for my follow up today.  We saw my surgeon and his chief resident.  They took out the stitches on the sides of my face, yay!  But the splint has to stay in for 6 weeks, yuk.  They told me that I was doing a good job healing, and the swelling was much less than most people at this point, but my bruising was worse than most people.  Basically, on the scale of severity of jaw surgeries, mine was on the high end, so I will be in pain for a while and it will take me longer to recouperate.  They showed side by side xrays of before and after and talked about all the changes.  I still can't get over how different it is.  You can't tell from the outside because of all the swelling, but there are huge differences in how my skull looks now.  I hope I can get pictures to show at some point.  My upper jaw is shorter and straight now.  My upper jaw and lower jaw are now centered, they used to be off to the left.  And my upper and lower jaws are moved forward a bit.  This has made my nose kindof go up at the tip.  It's hard to tell right now because I'm so puffy, but eventually, they say I'll see the difference.  I go back for a follow up visit in 2 weeks.  The doctors told me I could go off the other pain meds and just stick to the pill.  But so far today, I have been in so much pain, that I don't think I'm ready to just do one pain killer every 6 hours.  Scott came over to visit tonight.  We chatted a little and watched tv.  I felt so bad that I couldn't talk much toward the end.  But Scott is an awesome boyfriend and just smiled and kept me company.  He also took my pics today.  Here they are...