recovery update blog

i'll try to keep this one short and sweet.

round two of surgery was on tuesday. once they got in there, they decided to start over from scratch in order to get my jaw lined up correctly. so they re-opened both my incisions and re-did all the plates and pins. in addition, as was discussed, they wired my jaw shut. this definitely was a lot more trauma on my face than i was expecting, and the whole thing took about six hours to complete. i spent tuesday night in the hospital.

wednesday i was allowed to go home. we had some difficulty regulating my pain medications once we got home and staying "ahead of the pain", so i had some pretty rough stretches on wednesday and thursday. we maybe left the hospital a day earlier than we should have, but at the same time, i could barely sleep in that place and i was miserable there.

once we were home, we also had a struggle with medications. as you know, my jaw is wired shut, so anything i take has to be ground up and put in something, or in liquid form. as we had guessed, most of the meds they've prescribed taste like pure terror when in liquid form. considering i have to take 4-5 different meds, we were having a really hard time with nausea. if you've ever met anyone who has had their jaw wired shut, you have to carry scissors around with you everywhere just in case you have to throw up. you have to cut your wires so you don't choke on your own vomit. so nausea becomes something you must absolutely avoid at all costs.

so we finally got our medications kinda figured out to a point where i'm not nauseous anymore. we found that we could grind a few up in a protein shake and the taste wasn't too terrible. we also were able to get the pain under control and we're back on a working meds schedule and i'm feeling much better.

the swelling goes down every day and we're just kinda taking it day by day knowing that the worst of it is now behind us. i'm trying trying trying to stay positive.

no word yet on how long the jaw stays shut. could be two weeks (amazing!) but it will probably be more like four (decent!) or six (nooo!). i have follow-up appointments last week.

that's about it. i knew there were a lot of people who were wondering how the second round of surgery went. it's been probably the toughest three days so far, but we're on the other side of it and it's going to get better!

thanks again for all the love and support. and to my richmond friends who are going out to that huge dance party tonight - dance a little extra hard for me.

love,
phil