Things I stuck in my backpack for the hospital stay (and whether they were useful):
- small pad of paper and pen (YES)
- phone & charger (yup)
- fuzzy socks (nope)
- a different outfit than I went in with (nope)
- ipad (nope)
- kindle (haha, nope)
- sheet of paper with questions/concerns for me to point at (nope)
- small mirror (nope)
- face wipes (nope, hospital gave me baby wipes)
Things I bought to prep for the surgery:
- Extra pillows (omg buy jumbo super fluffy ones! like 4!)
- Aquphor and A+D Ointment (one to carry around, one for the bathroom)
- Jaw Bra (absolutely necessary, but don't buy the gel packs. Get these instead, like 8 of them.)
- Waterpik (already had one for my braces. you MUST get one if you have braces. and not the portable kind - the real one with 10 settings.)
- Nutribullet (already had it, and it's the BEST personal blender)
- Vitamix (we got it refurbished, and I'm so glad we did. this thing DESTROYS food. love it.)
- Protein powder (vanilla powder - no. chocolate powder - YES.)
- Soylent (almost tasteless, which is way better than tasting terrible. and healthier than Ensure.)
- Ensure (nope, terrible. like a disgusting fake milkshake.)
- Baby food pouches (we ordered these, which are pretty tasty)
- Neck pillow (nope, hurts my jaw)
The doctor/hospital gave us 3 syringes, 3 catheter tubes, and 3 squeeze bottles with long spouts. These are SOOO necessary for your survival.
And we already had boxes of mashed potatoes, my favorite Greek yogurts, whole fat milk, tons of beef stock from my dad, farm fresh eggs, lots of fruits and vegetables, and of course the biggest jar of white truffle cream sauce I could find. Cuz who wouldn't want to truffle-ize everything while being forced to eat from a tube? (I also got a bottle of white truffle oil and black truffle salt. Haha.)
The actual surgery...
We got to the hospital at 5:30 am, just like they told us to. I was pretty much ready to go by 6:10 am, but my surgery was scheduled for 7:30 am. So hubby and I just chilled. Nobody else was in the (uh...) waiting room, so once I was IV-ed up (which hurt, btw, and I actually like watching myself get poked by needles) we just sat and talked. I cried a little, yes, but that was at the very beginning. :P
Once 7:30 hit, my oral surgeon came in and said a quick hello and then my anesthesiologist came and introduced himself. He was nice, but he said something about "God looking over us" and I sort of wanted to roll my eyes. This is not the time to preach, dummy!
Then everything happened super fast. I got wheeled into the OR, which was CRAZY! I felt like I was in an alien abduction - it was surreal and didn't look anything like the OR's on TV. I was in this huge room with 3 giant lights above me and all of my xrays were on the wall and everyone was wooshing around me. I hear the anesthesiologist go, "Okay, I'm just going to give you something to relax you." BAM awake in the recovery room! I may have drifted in and out of sleep, but I felt super awake and I kept trying to get the attention of the nurses in there. They'd be like, "Oh, she's awake, blah blah gossip gossip" but I wanted them to talk to me so I started waving at them and telling them (I could talk?!) that my mom was a nurse. (I pretty much did that to all of my nurses. I felt like it would make them like me more. No idea if it worked or not.) Pretty soon after that, I got wheeled to what I thought would be room 420 (yup, I remember cuz they said 420) and then they went "Wait, no, she's going to room 419... Oh, you're a lucky girl. You get your own room." Score!
From about noon to 4:00 pm, I felt pretty good. I was waving my hands around, texting, and trying to talk. (I woke up with 4 rubber bands in my mouth and NO SPLINT. Awesome.) See how happy I look?
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| I look ridiculous. But kinda cute. Hahaha. |
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| Hubby says I look like a cosmonaut here. |
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| Yeah, feelin' good! |
(Oh, btw, what I got done - my lower jaw was moved back about 5 mm and to the right a little bit, and then my chin was moved up a little and to the left. Basically, my bottom jaw was too big and my top jaw was a little pushed to the right. So, instead of doing double jaw surgery, he moved my bottom jaw to fit my top jaw and then moved my chin back over to where it was. So I'm kinda crooked. Whatever. I figure I was already crooked and I didn't even realize it!)
My pain held steady at around 6/10. I think I was still coming off the anesthesia... cuz around 7:00 pm, I started to really feel it. They gave me hydrocodone, then 1 mg of morphine, but the pain just got worse and worse. My actual Rx was 1 mg morphine per hour, but it just wasn't cutting it. I was SO very lucky that my night nurse was amazing and eventually called my surgeon at 9:00 pm to give me a Rx for a morphine drip. The surgeon ended up speaking with my sister, who took at least 10 minutes convincing him that I REALLY needed that morphine drip. (And I did. I'm not a wimp; this was serious pain. I cried and whimpered like a baby. Apparently, the doctor must have done a phenomenal job avoiding my nerves.) About an hour later, I was set up with a continuous drip that would slowly give me 1 mg of morphine per hour, plus I could self-administer another 1 mg of morphine every 15 minutes. It took another 2 hours for me to fall asleep relatively pain-free.
Oh, while I was falling asleep, I heard something interesting... The night nurse was talking about how she works for both the county hospital (where I was) and Kaiser. What insurance does she have, though? PPO. Her explanation was that Kaiser is a great place to work and has excellent nurses and fine physicians but, if she were to need serious care, she would want the expertise and experience that isn't as common at Kaiser hospitals. This is exactly what I've heard many times over. Kaiser is great... as a business, for the masses. They even approve and cover almost all orthognathic surgeries. I had the option of changing my insurance to Kaiser last year, but I chose to stay with my PPO even though my oral surgeon was out of network. (I learned that most "good" oral surgeons are out of network - out of ALL networks. That's ridiculous, right? Let's hope he's worth it.)
Yeah, so light's out on jaw surgery day 0.
~m
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