The house move was as easy as it could possibly be. I moved 7 houses from where I was. But it still meant packing every possession and cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning. Settling in has been much easier than last time though.
2 weeks after I moved, and 3 weeks and 1 day ago was my surgery. I had a very bad underbite (ie my bottom teeth were in front of my top teeth - by about 1cm), and after 4.5 years of braces to prepare, I had both my bottom and top jaws moved, in what is known as a bi-maxillary osteotomy.
Due to some concerns by my surgeon about possible excessive bleeding and a few other things, I didn't know when I went into surgery whether I'd come out with anything having been done. We had 3 different plans. The first was to move my bottom jaw back. If that was tricky, they'd stop there. If they drilled a hole and blood squirted across the room, they'd stop there and nothing would be done. If the bottom jaw went as per usual, they'd think about doing the top one on the spot. So it was all a bit unknown, but I woke up 3 hours after they put me under to be told by my brilliant surgeon that they'd done both jaws and all went well.
Recovery was bad but not as bad as I'd expected. The surgery was on a Thursday morning and I went home on the Sunday morning. The only downside of going home so soon was a serious drop in the amount of painkillers I was getting. But I got through that and am healing well now. I've had a checkup with the surgeon and orthodontist and they are all thrilled (as am I!).
Now I just need to be patient. I'm not allowed to chew for another 3 weeks while the bones heal. My face is swollen and uncomfortable but it isn't really too painful any more. The main pain comes from the evil elastics on my braces. They're used to retrain the muscles of my jaw and also to continue moving my teeth. I'll need braces for a little while yet just to fine tune my bite. Hopefully by the middle of next year they'll be off and I can get on with life with a perfect bite for the first time!
Oh and I have 6 plates and 20 screws in my head!
