Day 13: Back to the Oral Surgeon

Last night right before I went to bed, my mouth started to hurt a little bit. The pain went along the base of my bottom teeth on my left side. It kind of felt like it does when they tighten my braces. I just took some normal motrin and it felt better in the morning.

This afternoon I went back to the oral surgeon for another check up, and it was the first time my surgeon has seen me since the day I was discharged from the hospital. He said that everything is coming along great. He took off my heavy duty rubber bands and put on some lighter ones that will continue to guide my bite into the right place. There is one on each side of my mouth now, and they are both in the shape of parallelograms. I can now take them out when I eat or brush my teeth and then put them back in. For a couple minutes there were no rubber bands on my teeth at all, and it felt really weird. Theoretically, I should have been able to open my mouth all the way, but when I opened it for the surgeon to look at everything, I could only open it so far before my jaw felt sore. I like having the rubber bands in my mouth because they make everything feel stable. In addition, he said that close to 70%-80% of my swelling has gone down. It will take a few months before all of the swelling is completely gone, especially right around my mouth, but I'm willing to wait since everything has been coming along wonderfully so far. I go back to the surgeon on Friday, August 12th, right before I go back to school.

In addition to the usual pictures, here are pictures of my bite before and after surgery. You can see that in the after picture my lower teeth are right behind my upper teeth as opposed to the before picture.

                                                       Before                                 After 

Here are the rest of the pictures: