SARME Surgery post-op day 33 - mind the gap!

It's been a few weeks since I posted to my blog, because to be honest nothing much has been happening apart from the gap getting bigger and bigger!  I've become quite self conscious (although not  enough to stop me from posting this) because the wider the gap has become, the more you notice the slant in my jaw.  This has led me to covering my mouth a great deal while out in public and I have become quite sensitive, even dare I say, high maintenance.  Of course I always knew that my jaw had grown downwards at a slant - the gap just exaggrates it greatly and I'm looking more and more like Cletus from The Simpsons.  The slant in my jaw will be fixed up though through a combination of the braces and my jaw re-alignment surgery next year.

The exciting news is that I went to see my orthodontist on Monday and they instructed me to stop turning the expander as the upper jaw has now been widened enough.  So that's a total of 25 days expanding twice a day, and I'm quite glad that stage is over.  While expanding never caused me any pain as such, I did feel a lot of pressure on my jaw after each expansion.  As each expansion was only 12 hours apart - the pressure was almost constant all day, every day.

Anyhow they do not call it a rapid maxillary expansion for nothing, and the photo's below show my expansion progress since my last blog post.

Post-op day eight (six days turning the device)

Post-op day twelve (ten days turning the device)

Post-op day 20 (18 days turning the device)

Post-op day 28 (26 days and the turning has stopped!)

In five weeks time I will be getting my lower braces on - I'm quite looking forward to that.  The upper braces will not be able to go on for a further four weeks though as my upper jaw needs time to heal in the new position.  This does mean the gap will remain for at least nine more weeks until the braces can start closing the gap, and the expansion device will need to remain in my mouth for that length of time, but at least things are moving along.  I still have virtually no feeling in my upper jaw or gums, but now the jaw has started healing the feeling should start to come back.  I have been advised though that it could be a number of months for the feeling to fully return.

Eating is still a chore and while I can eat semi-solid food, I still cannot eat anything too chewy or crunchy.  I've been making up for it with the soft foods though and have been eating so much yoghurt that I've put on a couple of kilos!

As a last note, I had a really strange dream last night (which was partly red wine fuelled) where my front teeth fell out and new ones instantly grew in their place.  I think this highlights the anxiety I have been feeling, but I'm still in good spirits.

Over and out.