Day 260 - Somewhat Closer!

So I have had 2 orthodontist appointments since the original sad day. They have tried getting my front-ish teeth to have contact after my bite unexpectedly opening up. My orthodontist is please with how all of my teeth finally touch EXCEPT for my top 2 and bottom 2 in the center. but he commented that is as good as it is gonna get with the shaping of my teeth. anyway! he said i am ready to get my braces off!!!

*gets excited*
ready for the excitement to die?

so i walk up to schedule my appointment and the receptionist said they don't have any appointments until MARCH 31st. WHAT??? how is that :( 5 weeks is terrible. so that crushed my happiness.

but… the receptionist said if anyone cancels i'll be first on the list to get in. (so people please cancel your appointments!!!)

so i guess I'm a step closer to getting them off. just don't know what to think… trying to keep my patience!

yay for my front part of my bite for mostly touching now!!

so… the wait for a call from the orthodontist commences… sigh. hope all is well out there! i guess we all have our own issues to deal with and mine aren't too bad, just involve time… which sucks. but oh well. fingers crossed that next time i post i have good news:)

-Katie:)

Day 195 - All Hail the Waterpik

soo…. today I discovered the glorious thing that is the waterpik. I was cleaning today to prep for the holidays… and i found my almost new waterpik tucked under my sink! I know lots of blogs i have read raved about how wonderful it is. But today, i discovered how right they truly are. haha

My surgeon didn't want me using a water pick after surgery because he didn't want it to possibly hurt my incisions, which makes sense to me. I just completely forgot to take it out after my incisions healed…. until now anyway.

That thing is amazing! gets food out SOOO easily. It is like Christmas came a few days early! hahahahah. Easily the highlight of my day.

So, I just thought I'd update. Also, with essentially being banded shut at night, my jaw has started hurting again…

I'm super worried that the bands are pulling my jaw to an uncomfortable, unnatural spot :( So, I kinda want to call my orthodontist and just talk to him for reassurance. I just want the pain to go away. It isn't my teeth that hurt. Just… my jaw hurts badly when I wake up after wearing the bands. feels like the before surgery pain. noooo :(

but i guess ill get it figured out. just wish it was easier!

but anyway, i hope all of you guys have a wonderful holiday. enjoy any break you have :) I'm off to ignore reality by reading The Book Thief. take care :)

-Katie:)

Day 183 - SIX MONTHS:)

June 10th - December 10th.

I made it to 6 months post-op. Wow. Who would have thought I could have made it this far :) So i was gonna write a super long post… but it is late.. and i had a full day of homework and college applications. so to say i am exhausted is an understatement. anyway, ill still mention a few things! basically though things are the same from my last post.

I do have some updates though because i had an orthodontist appointment today! and it was exciting because it was to get my "finishing bands" (which is code word for a big pain in the butt) basically i have one huge rubber band for each side and i have to zig zag it up and down across every tooth. this basically makes me unable to open my mouth at all. reminds me of days after surgery…! and i didn't miss it at all… luckily i only have to sleep in the bands.

what is really odd to me is that my orthodontist cut my wires and only kept them across my front teeth. maybe that helps the tiny movements of my back teeth allow for a better bite? I'm not sure. i see the point of the rubber bands to move teeth to fit a comfortable bite. i just better make sure i wear them every night! because during the day my back teeth don't have any wires or bands on them. weird right?!

today i had to see my incision sites in my lower back of my mouth as i have to start the bands on my last molar. it was bigger than i expected and kinda scary to see. but it made surgery seem like such a real and lifelong thing i guess. idk, it was good and bad to notice!

but anyway, i go back to the orthodontist in 4 weeks for them to see what everything looks like. and then hopefully by february i get my braces off!! woo :)

my last post had so much info… and i feel like I'm only repeating myself… but hmm. things are good! ill keep you guys updated with how i end things with my braces :) hopefully we get to part sooner than later.

here are a few random pictures i guess?

definitely feel like swelling is gone. yay :)

when they had my wire out at the orthodontist and i was pretending like i didn't have braces… if only it were real. haha.

before bands.

after…

soooo many bands……………..! but you can
 see how there isn't a wire on any of my back teeth.

hope all is well with those of you on this journey too :) off to sleep for me..! if ya need anything, just holler :)

-Katie:)

Day 132 - Busy, Busy, Busy

so this past week i have been dealing with a sinus infection, and that made my jaw pain increase substantially. the areas on either side of my nose not only ached immensely from the sinus infection, but also the plates there from surgery just made my whole face ache. ouch! luckily i am starting to feel better from the antibiotics i got, and things are going back to normal.

sorry i haven't updated for a while! golf season just made me insanely busy. since i have to go finish up some homework, ill just attach a few random pictures, and then update at a later date?

im set to get braces off at the end of january as of now.

 

my HUGE pills for my sinus infection. 875 mg.

my last homecoming!

golf tournament with my tissue box. don't golf with a sinus infection. not fun.

GUYS. I had my first piece of gum today (well multiple). another reason why i felt it appropriate to make a post. Before surgery i was truly addicted to gum, we are talking like 5+ pieces of gum a day, so it is pretty darn great for it not to hurt to chew it again. yay for normalcy!

I still get headaches and randoms aches depending on the day, but hoping that it just continues to be less and less... some things are irritating from surgery.. but overall i can live with it.

hope all is well with you guys!

-Katie:)

Day 84 - TWELVE WEEKS (pictures upon pictures)

So since im not feeling a ton better yet (with my head cold symptoms), I am pretty positive that i have a sinus infection. whoopee :\ but oh well. ill head to the doctor sometime next week and hopefully get some medicine. just wanted to do some sort of update since i have free time tonight! i've been crazy busy with school and golf and show choir recently, missing school for tournaments and everything else just makes my life insanely busy! but oh well, i love everything, so i deal with only getting 5-6 hours of sleep and such. but it does make me appreciate my weekends :)

love not having my over bite!!!! :):):)

here are some candids from this weekend. wow! i don't have to worry about my profile anymore, woohoo :)

as far as jaw related things go, everything is pretty good. I am now chewing more and more. this monday is my 12 week mark which is when my surgeon said i can try to eat a steak.. yay! it still feels quite weird to chew though... so im hoping it just starts to feel more and more normal as the weeks go on. my biggest complaint right now is my sensitivity. i can't even use my sonicare toothbrush because it hurts so badly :( the sensitivity still feels like when you have a cold popsicle and it touches some teeth that are super sensitive to it and you experience almost some sort of pain. im not even sure how to describe it. but it is annoying and such. i also feel it when i eat hard food. so most times i just try to eat the softest food as possible...

BUT last night i tried to eat some steak because my family was having it and i was just starved. i cut it up into super duper tiny pieces and tried my best to chew. I could kinda mush it but it gave me a headache to fully bite down on the steak. so i just went and mixed it with baked beans and swallowed it whole. I give up on chewing things like that super easily.... just easier to cut it up extremely tiny and swallow whole.

but let's see... what else to update. oh i guess i could talk about numbness. the only things still completely numb are my upper gums. everything else i can at least tell that im touching it.
NUMBNESS:

90% feeling

• chin
• bottom lip
• bottom gums

60% feeling (i can feel it completely but there is tingling too)

• nose
• edge of cheeks (more towards my ears)
• left cheek inside of mouth

30% feeling (i can tell something is touching it.... but cant exactly "feel" it, and tons of tingling)

• upper lip
• roof of mouth
• inside left cheek (keep biting it accidentally when i eat..)
• the area of my cheeks right next to my nose (where the screws and plates on my upper jaw are)

0% feeling

• upper gums (i can't even tell when i am brushing them...)

still have sensitivity in my mouth, but i think it may be SLOWLY improving yay! but i still cant use my sonicare toothbrush... which sucks. it is really hard for me to get the "clean mouth" feeling. but oh well.

here is my bite. have an ortho appt wednesday and im FINALLY going to ask how much longer i have my braces on for!! hopefully i get them off soon....... *crosses fingers*

hmm, i think my swelling is almost completely gone! some days i wake up and look a tiny bit puffier than others... but i think im the only one that can notice it.

bored before school one morning about a week ago...

also, i still have my left jaw joint popping sometimes, but only after long periods of me not doing anything with my jaw and then i go to eat something hard. so maybe it is just getting used to everything again? hope so :( don't want to be stuck with that forever. at least i don't have pain when it pops though.

after days where i chew a lot, my jaw does ache. there are a couple different types of pain i still experience... one being just tiredness in the joints and just overall from over-chewing or talking. but then sometimes i have pain in my lower jaw where the plates are or my upper jaw where the plates are still. which probably shouldn't be happening but i don't know what to do about it.

my lips are less stiff!!! i still can't do "fish" lips... but i can at least make a "kissy-face"...

overall i am still so happy that i went ahead with the surgery :) even though it was a rough recovery the first month... i survived the worst of it and can now just move past all of this. i feel pretty good about my face even though i think i look different sometimes... but i guess everyone goes through that with this surgery. our face is just so integral to who we are... just scary to change it and still try to see yourself. but hey, having all of my teeth touch is SOOO worth it :)

my lips don't touch naturally still... but they are SOOOO close. so i can live with that. 

anyway, sorry for the loads and loads of pictures.... i just didn't really want to sort through a ton and figure out which were best to post, so i just put them all in! I hope all is well with you guys going through something similar... :) now to start another insanely busy week....

-Katie:)

Day 69 - Subtle Changes (before/after)

So, I hope you guys are alright! 

my biggest complaints by now are the sensitivity, numbness, and clicking of my jaw joint.

you know the sensitivity that you feel if you bite into a popsicle? or just when anything too cold touches your teeth? well, that is what it feels like when i brush my teeth with my sonicare toothbrush OR chew hard things. which is extremely annoying. I'm not sure if it is because the numbness on my upper gums may be returning? or? have any of you guys had a lot of sensitivity post-op?

when i chew soft things it is fine, but say i try to chew a cracker, it just sparks uncomfortable sensations in my upper gums and teeth, and some on the lower too. not to mention it feels like it is too much on my jaw, so i am sticking to softer foods. peanut butter and jelly is my "go-to" lunch! but i am probably being too adventurous too fast with food. definitely have chewed hard crackers, pickles, and hard meats. it is challenging and makes my jaw ache... but the food is SO yummy. ill never take food for granted again after this surgery... that is for sure. i also wanted to briefly mention the annoying clicking/popping of my left jaw joint again.. it hasn't gone away :( sometimes it isn't there, but other times it is... and i am just worried itll be there forever :(

overall though everything is great, swelling is mostly gone (on some days i notice that it gets a little worse again, but oh well). today i had some pain in my face, but some days i have none. it is all just up and down by this point in recovery.

hope all is well with you guys :) 

-Katie:)

Day 56 - 8 WEEKS!! - i can chew! (well.. kinda)

THE DAY HAS ARRIVED GUYS. as you can tell im pretty happy. best day ever. :)

i can chew. whoopee :)

my day started off with an early 7:30 am appt with my orthodontist. okay, i know i posted a little bit ago about the whole ordeal with rubber bands on the front of my mouth and the communication issues between my surgeon and ortho and their offices... blah. so today i finally got scheduled with my orthodontist. first they pulled out my lower wire. ouch! only to put the same one back in.... :\ did they really have to torture me that extra amount for no reason? they then switched my top wire, and i still have boxes with rubber bands... on the sides... just smaller boxes. i realized they weren't putting bands on the front... which is what my surgeon wanted... so i asked my ortho about this... cause i was concerned and confused. he told me that my front 2 teeth slightly were overlapping one another and so the band on the front would only worsen that. which i guess makes sense.. hopefully my surgeon is okay with this? anyway... so i go back to see my ortho in 4 weeks. all of the nurses/assistants there were all over me again asking how i was, even ones that i barely recognized! so weird (in a good way) and cool that they all know about me and such :) it was very nice of them.

after my early morning appt... (i have been suffering all day from not getting a ton of sleep last night :P better get on a better schedule again, oops!) i walked into my kitchen contemplating whether i wanted an egg or smoothie when suddenly it hit me. i could try something new. i immediately went for the cinnamon-sugar toast. well... i just microwaved it so it would be soft, so actually it would be bread not toast :P and then just put a ton of butter on it. and had my first attempt at chewing! after EIGHT WEEKS of nothing. wow. the first thing i would call it is.. weird. really weird. it feels like hmm.... like i am chewing a piece of rubber. because i feel like my jaw isnt strong enough to bite down completely on everything. just kinda squishes the food down enough to swallow. and it kinda gives me a headache. and my left jaw started clicking/popping which has me super worried..... i hope this goes away :( so i need to start practicing and reteaching myself how to chew! was i expecting it to be hard to chew? yes. was i successful at chewing? only a tiny bit. was it still amazing? YES:)

so, one of my friends texted me since she knew today was the big day. she came and picked me up and we adventured through target. i decided that what i wanted the most today, was potato chips. i figured they would dissolve easy enough to make them manageable to chew. so we picked up 2 bags and just sat and watched a movie and netflix together all afternoon. it was pretty great. :) i basically ate potato chips for both lunch and dinner and am not even ashamed to admit it! ill go back to eating "healthy" stuff tomorrow... today was a special day.

In regards to the whole chewing thing, itll take a while to get anywhere near normal. Today, i started to get sores underneath my top lip and cheeks from rubbing against my braces... whether this is from talking a lot, or the ortho adjustment this morning, or chewing, i have no clue. but it makes it hurt to talk! so hopefuly those heal up quickly. i may be wearing wax tomorrow.

also... i wanted to complain quickly about the numbness still around my incision areas or areas in the back of my mouth still being numb, because now that i can chew, i got food stuck in all sorts of places in my mouth and didnt notice for a while! so annoying... don't know the best way to clean that out besides just brushing my teeth (since im not allowed to use my water pick yet). so ill just be brushing my teeth a lot for a while...

so! since this is a big "8 week" post... ill write more about how i am feeling/doing overall

sleep - i can now sleep on my face without pain, so yay for sleeping curled up in a ball:)

energy - normal! i havent exercised yet mostly because it feels weird on my face to run and/or jump... the pain is slowly going down. but i feel like it would be kinda painful for me. i could tough it out if necessary though!

numbness
so this is getting harder and harder to explain. ill start off by saying that i can "feel" everywhere i touch except for my gums on my top teeth. which is pretty great. now.. i have a TON of partial numbness though. the inside of my mouth has the most numbness. areas around the incisions are pretty numb. hmm, so are the insides of my cheeks. my left cheek is way more numb than my right though which is weird. the areas on either side of nose are the most numb on the outside of my face. but idk, it is really hard to tell what is numb and what isnt and what is tingly, idk! just all runs together. ill include in this part this my face is still stiff. smiling is still a tad awkward. and yeah

random stuff now... so... im still working on getting to open my mouth wider, im slowly making progress! im at about 28 mm, and gotta get to 35 mm. hopefully i can! cause it makes singing easier when i can actually open my mouth.

my nose still is annoying... pretty sure i have a deviated septum now :\ so i can almost never breathe out of the left side of my nose... but idk. we'll see what happens in the future...

i am still not taking any medicine for pain, even though sometimes i have it, it isn't bad enough to take medicine normally. yay for that :) i have a lot of headaches though... and just random aches. but oh well. gets better by the day still.

swelling is pretty much gone. some people say they notice it, some don't. not sure what to believe, i feel kinda puffy, but i think this is mostly just from the remaining numbness and stiffness.

anyway, i think i got enough into this post... overall things are great :) hope all is great with anyone still reading this. a big thanks if you are :) this blog has been amazing. much love.

-Katie:)

Day 53 - No Chew Diet... FOOD LIST

Okay, so today (since i can't think of anything better to ramble on about) i am just going to compile a huge list of everything that i discovered i could eat without chewing. This isnt necessarily a "liquid" diet... but i was able to mash all of these foods well enough with a fork to choke them down with little effort without chewing, which was/is my constraint! But, ill start with what i ate the first week when i was completely banded shut and had to use a syringe. because i battled a ton of nausea though... i didn't eat a ton. resulting in me losing 7 pounds the first week... which is quite a lot for how tiny i am already. but, i stopped losing weight after i discovered i could eat mashed cake after being unbanded :P anyway... here is a long list!

Liquids (stuff i ate through the syringe in the hospital..)

• apple and grape juice (my favorites to mix with the icky medicine)
• sprite/ginger ale and other sodas hurt a tiny bit on my throat, but helped my stomach settle
• gatorade/powerade is a major must
• smoothies - as long as they were melted enough! (no seeds)
• Boost Breeze - this was my main way of getting in calories, each 8 fl oz juice box had 250 calories and 9 grams of protein. they tasted like jello to me, i like orange the best! (i couldnt stand the taste of things like ensure... as i hate the taste of milk (probably from being lactose intolerant.))
• Tomato soup was awesome too. My only complaint was that it coated the back of my throat and teeth.. and as i couldn't brush my teeth it just made me feel gross. plus, it made it harder to breathe as my throat felt so clogged.
• Chicken broth, can't go wrong with this
• any other blended soup or food for that matter.. i never found one i liked very much.. and as i only needed to use syringes for a week, i never ventured too far with blended things.

No-Chew Foods (now... i kinda do a "half-chew" with my tongue and just used saliva to get most of these things down, some of them hurt my throat a tiny bit, but is was SO worth it... there was NO way i was going to eat blended foods for 2 months... that was too gross for me.) 

after every single one of these items, just add on in your head "mashed with a fork" my fork did all of the "chewing" for me!

Breakfast

• scrambled eggs 
• pancakes (cut them up SUPER tiny and then add a lot of syrup and peanut butter for protein-YUM)
• hashbrowns -mashed.. these were harder to get down, but you can always douse them in syrup
• yogurt of course! (just had to take my lactose intolerant medicine)
• fruit - i discovered that i could swallow raspberries and blackberries if they were overripe and squishy, if i mashed them up, also! i enjoyed almost rotten peaches mashed with a fork, and bananas (with peanut butter). other soft fruits work mashed up too!
• applesauce (this was my GO-TO thing to eat in the middle of the night when my medicine said to take "with food" so that my stomach wouldn't hurt)
• smoothies - i got really good at making these myself, i just pour in apple juice and cran-raspberry juice, then frozen mixed berries, and frozen bananas, and blended it up! then i would add in Miralax, which i have used to keep my stomach issues at bay... and if it was sour, i could always dump in a ton of sugar!)

Lunch/Dinner

• soups.. of course.. but i got sick of those... so i quit eating soup. i hate soup now actually.  
• spaghetti (and other noodles)- okay, everyone always makes so much fun of me... because i cut up the noodles SUPER tiny and relatively quickly! i am pretty darn good at it by now.. haha. but this was one of my main meals for the longest time. i also found these tiny "circle" noodles that i didnt even have to cut up! they slipped right down my throat, yay
• sloppy joes - just the inside of course :P
• ice cream
• baked beans
• black beans and rice and salsa all mixed together
• rice - with different sauces, mexican, chinese, etc
• refried beans
• chili
• cornbread casserole - best. thing. ever.
• mashed potatoes - definitely one of the main things i have eaten!
• CAKE - just put extra frosting on and mash with fork. SO amazing.
• peanut butter (just on a spoon. mix in honey too. yum.)
• melted chocolate
• mini lollipops
• the inside of tacos (ground beef, cheese, salsa, rice, all mixed together, yum)
• stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and turkey (shredded) and all mixed together

my mashed strawberries! these took forever to cut up... but were beyond delicious. so worth it.

A huge thanks to those of you still reading..! Hope all is well.

-Katie:)

Day 52 - Running? No Thanks...

Some days my jaw feels better than others... which is to be expected. But lately i just keep feeling like im having a "bad day" over and over and over again. but i still have improvements!

one thing i wanted to complain about today was the my face is still breaking out more than normal!! i used to never have to "wash" my face with anything special and i would rarely break out. but now... i have lots of issues unless i wash it.. and even then, just kinda gross! thank goodness for makeup to cover up the issue spots... just hope it goes back to normal eventually... has anyone else experienced this after surgery?

I was on the golf course today, and I was feeling restless and just lightly ran back to the cart from my ball. and I noticed that my face still feels weird and hurts from all that motion! i have not exercised since before surgery... i have the energy to. but idk... im just avoiding it. jumping and running just makes my jaw hurt! like my cheeks moving up and down just isnt pleasant. so ill just hope it gets better soon? is it this bad for anyone else this far out from surgery...? i just feel like it should be more normal by now!

I REALLY WANT TO BE ABLE TO CHEW... my jaw doesn't really hurt, and i feel like i should be allowed to by now! just gotta wait until monday... which is easier said than done, but itll get here eventually!

can't. wait.

until tomorrow,

-Katie:)