Surgical patient's guide
Tips and advice
I would have liked to have some tips and pieces of advice from people who had gone through an orthognathic surgery before I went through mine. Being very organized, I had planned for a lot of things, but not all of them. So here are very practical tips and pieces of advice to those who have decided to go through this kind of surgery.
Contents:
General tips and advice
Medications
Diet
Things to buy before the surgery
Logistics
Healing
Miscellaneous
General tips and advice
- Important piece of advice: Have total confidence in your surgeon; you must feel like he/she is your best ally because he/she is the key player in your experience. If you feel like you can tell him/her about your fears and ask questions without being judged and you understand what he/she is saying, that means that you have found an excellent surgeon. Personally, I had total faith in my surgeon's expertise without forgetting that my only role as the surgical patient was to heal and follow his advice.
- If you have never loved the way you look and that orthodontics and/or an orthognathic surgery could help you feel better about yourself, don't hesitate! However, you must not forget that you have to do this first and foremost FOR YOURSELF and not to please someone else. You can have peripheral goals around all this, but do it for yourself first.
- Call the Ordre des dentistes du Québec or a similar organization for people living outside Quebec to verify that the dental health professionals to whom you entrust your mouth with were not sued or disciplinary measures were not taken against them in the past.
- Demand a detailed treatment plan from the orthodontist and the surgeon and ensure to understand it well. You are invited to ask questions as needed before agreeing to the suggested dental treatments.
- If orthognathic surgery is part of the suggested dental treatments, do not document yourself too much about the surgery on the internet. Too many details may scare you more than anything else!
Medications
- Get the medications prescribed by your surgeon when you are released from the hospital before you return home and take them as prescribed. It is not the time to show that you are tough; you will probably be in pain during the first days following your surgery.
- Ask your surgeon if you can take over-the-counter drugs that relieve nausea (like Gravol) with the drugs that he/she prescribed to you after you return home. This will avoid calling your surgeon, or even worse, ask your spouse to call him/her, in the middle of the night because of nausea that doesn't seem to subside and you're seeking for a relief. This is what happened to me.
Diet
- If prescribed medications contain narcotics, drink a lot of water and take fibre supplement to avoid any intestinal problem while you take this kind of medications.
- Prepare soups or buy some already made for the weeks during which the jaws will be free to move but before the mouth can open wide enough to eat more solid food without effort.
- Tell yourself that there is a good chance you will often eat the same thing during the first few weeks after the surgery (eggs, spaghetti, soup, etc.). With that being said, plan to eat things that you like that can be easily squished or that are very soft because having to eat something you hate for a few weeks will bring your spirits down!
- Hide the food that you really like and that you won't be able to eat. Personally, I found it very difficult emotionally to see my husband eat crispy food (chips, almonds, chocolate) while I was on a liquid only diet. By remembering the intensity of the outburst I did one evening, it affected me very much to see him eat like that!
Things to buy before the surgery
- Buy drinking straws with moderation. I had been told that I could drink with a straw. Therefore, I bought 300 straws but I was able to easily do the sucking motion with a straw only when I returned to work 2 weeks after my second surgery!
- Buy little plastic or carton glasses to drink. They are much easier to drink from and with the clumsiness I had to drink a simple liquid, I found these glasses as being very good allies.
- Buy a kids toothbrush before the surgery. It will be of great help for the first times you brush your teeth after the surgery following your surgeon's recommendations. It is smaller than an adults toothbrush and since your mouth will not open much during the first days following the surgery, you will have less frustrations than with an adults toothbrush!
- Make sure you have plenty of tissues. The first few days after my orthognathic surgeries, I produced an incredible and ridiculous amount of saliva and my nose was constantly running. Saliva was constantly flowing down my mouth and my nose was always stuffed; I couldn't control anything in that area. I emptied my stock of tissues at home and I always had a towel wrapped around my neck entirely dedicated to wipe out the saliva as soon as it would leave my mouth! ;)
- For chapped lips (and believe me, this kind of surgery is very tough on the lips!), there is nothing better than vaseline! Make sure to have some at home!
Logistics
- Bring some paper and pen with you in the hospital in the event where you wouldn't feel like talking after your surgery. (I found it very convenient to "talk" efficiently to the hospital staff and my husband.) Personally, I kept all sheets of paper which I had written on and I think that they are great to help me remember what I was feeling and some of the notes are now quite funny!
- If possible, prepare a spot at home where you will be able to sleep with your head elevated for the first days following the surgery. For example, I had a hard time sleeping in my bed because my pillow would always slip underneath me. Therefore, I decided to do camping in my living room where I could sleep almost sitting down by leaning on the back of the couch!
- Have someone be with you or who will be able to check up on you regularly during the time when your jaws will be held together. It was very comforting for me to know that my husband was not far away when I could not open my jaws. I choked on food a few times; nothing to worry about, but still, the first time, it is a little panicking!
- As much as possible, avoid having your surgery during a time of year when the hospital staff may be reduced and during which you could see a lot of people eat around you. In short, avoid the Christmas holidays! Your hospital stay and your spirits will possibly be better if you don't see people around you constantly eating things you like!
- Advice for women only: Plan the date of your surgery with care... During your hospital stay, you will not want to have to recuperate from the surgery with facial pain and be stuck with a little feminine "annoyance"! ;)
Healing
- Ask for new bags of ice for your cheeks every 2 hours during your hospital stay, no matter what the time is! I wrongfully thought that I would bother the attendants and the nurses by ringing them for help several times per night in the hospital and my face became greatly swollen. I waited for my ice to melt completely before asking for more. One day, the nurse told me that I should have put new ice on my cheeks every 2 hours! If I had known before! The hospital staff was there to help me and there I was, afraid to bother them!
- If your surgeon advises you to continue applying ice to your face after you return home, the best alternatives to ice that I found are bags of frozen vegetables and ice packs; not a chance of water leaks with these!
- Prepare yourself to having a sore throat after the surgery. The tracheal tube inserted in my throat during the surgery made me suffer enormously when I woke up from the anesthesia. After I returned home, I relieved my pain a little bit by drinking warm tea.
- Apply moist heat to the face after the initial 48 to 72-hour period following the surgery (during which swelling appears). Moist heat quickly reduces swelling. The best tool I found is a heat pad containing very hot water applied to the cheeks as often and as long as possible during the day. An alternative to the heat pad is a "Gel-Pak" hot gel compress made by FORMEDICA.
- Throughout your dental treatments, but more particularly during your recovery from the orthognathic surgery, take pictures of your face regularly. You will be impressed by the results, either by seeing a decrease in swelling or the physiological changes resulting from the surgery. It is not easy to take pictures of ourselves after being released from the hospital because the face can be particularly very "mutilated", but you will not regret it. Personally, my pictures with my swollen face are proofs of the stages I've been through and I still show them sometimes to people to impress them!
Miscellaneous
- To make the dental treatments appear to go faster, find a way to encourage yourself easily. Personally, I had made a little calendar that I put on the refrigerator. I would color a box every week of my treatments. I had divided my calendar in different colors (before my lower braces, before my surgery, after my surgery), so I would see the progress each week and that helped me not to get discouraged.
- Do cardiovascular workouts before the surgery. Not only will you feel better and have more energy as well as increasing your overall fitness, but your body will possibly recuperate a lot more rapidly. Anyway, good health always starts with physical exercise!
- Plan to do light activities, such as watching movies or reading books. If you decide to watch movies or TV, determine a list of movies to watch that won't make you laugh or cry because I found it very difficult to smile at first and my whole face hurt when I was crying. The important thing to remember here is to do what you like; it lifts up the spirits.
- Give news to your family and friends by email. It will prevent you from talking on the phone and you could be pleasantly surprised to see how many people will reply to offer you their moral support. Personally, I was flabbergasted to see how much my loved ones were worried about me and I felt better every time I would receive emails of encouragement!