Days 13-16

Everything is still coming along nicely. I have been doing some work from home and just taking it easy. I haven't been on the bike or trainer at all as I haven't felt up to it.


I see the Dr. again next Tuesday and I will probably return to work Wednesday. Aside from coffee, I am really sick of liquids.....

Day 12 - Dr. appointment 2

I had my 2nd appointment with the Dr. today and everything is going along as planned. He unwired my mouth and forced it open to keep things from getting too tight. He then wired me back up tighter than before :(.

Check out the x-rays!

This first side view, you can see the 7 screws near the back of my jaw pretty clearly. The plates and screws near my nose are holding the upper jaw in place. The bent plate near my chin is how they set my chin back and down a little.

This panoramic view showes the plates and screws a little clearer. The main positive is that my teeth are as close to perfectly aligned as we could have hoped.

The Dr. is quite happy with how things are going. I am slowly getting sensation back in my chin which implies the nerves are all intact. My lower lip is still completely numb but it should come back around after the chin. I am still swelled up a bit but certainly able to go out in public now :).

I am not going back to work until after my next appointment February 6th. I am still only able to get up and around for a few hours at a time before needing to lay down.

I did get to see John Behrens today and I went to dinner with a friend of Fion's and watched them eat while I drank a beer through a straw.

Days 10 and 11

Another two fairly uneventful days. A lot of my face is still numb but the swelling has been going down. My weight has stablized at 155lbs which is probably a pretty good weight for me. Once I get back on my training, I will undoubtably gain some pounds in muscle.


I see the Dr. on Friday and I should be given the green light to start talking again at least :).

Day 9

Hi all,


Another day about the same as yesterday. I rode my bike on the trainer for 20min and then got a hair to ride my bike around the neighborhood once. As I started riding, I noticed that with my teeth banded shut, I could feel the road bumps and vibrations in my tender face....no fun.


I will surely be on the trainer only for a while, but that is probably for the best. A crash right now would mean I go through the torture all over again....

Day 8

Just keeping the pictures going. Today was uneventful although I did get a chance to spin on the trainer for 20 minutes. I went super easy as my Dr. forbade me from raising my BP for a few weeks.


I have dropped from 172lbs pre-surgery (10 lbs heavier than my normal weight) down to 158lbs this morning. I am consuming about 2k calories in liquid per day but it doesn't seem to be enough.

Day 7

It seems I have met the plateau of my recovery. Everything from here on out will probably be just minor daily improvements. I will most likely reduce the frequency of my blog entries unless I have something interesting to add.

Someone commented in email that I look so expressionless in my pictures. This is actually due to how tight my face muscles are and the incisions are inside my mouth. All incisions were made at the upper and lower gumline so smiling actually does hurt ;).

The swelling isn't like any swelling I have had before. For any other injuries I have had, the swelling felt like fluid under the skin. In this case, it feels very hard..almost like it is under my muscles. Perhaps because all the surgery was done so deep, the swelling is also deep.

I woke up with another chemical headache so I decided to back off on the liquid Vicodin. I have gone most of the day without it and the pain is mostly manageable. My guess is that us cyclists learn to manage physical pain - which from my experience this morning is quite different than a migrane headache. I still had several "sudden" naps today so perhaps that isn't caused by the opiates.

Here is a cool link that shows a computer model for each of the procedures. Click the little button next to the skull and you can see the animation: http://www.mayoclinic.org/jaw-surgery/types.html

Day 6 - 1st Dr. Appt.

I had a rough night sleeping last night and woke up with a horrible headache. It didn't take long for the liquid vicodin to do its' thing and I was feeling good again. I am starting to get more feeling in my lips and my jaw muscles are starting to feel tight. Turns out these are good signs of recovery.

Today was also the first day I got out of the house. I had my first post-op Dr. appointment and I was a bit nervous. I walked in and my Dr. was pretty amazed at how well I was recovering. He seemed mostly impressed by how well I was walking. Usually the hip bone graft leaves people hobbling for a few weeks. Perhaps the 24/7 recovering from cycling has given me some decent healing ability.

He took the stitches out of my cheek and my hip and warned me to not overdo it. He did say it was okay to get on the stationary bike in short light intervals but to be careful to not raise my blood pressure. Until I get off all the drugs, I can't see me doing anything anyway because I pretty much fall asleep all the time.


Dr. also prescribed muscle relaxers as he doesn't want me clinching when I sleep. Given how tight my jaw feels today, I am ready for em!

Day 5 - Mostly recovery

Today was the first day that was semi-"normal". My sinuses for most of the day felt great. The only other sign of improvement was that my lower lip stays closed on its' own again so the swelling must be reducing slightly.

The only negative was the "new" wound. I am wearing a heat pack across my face most of the time and when I was grabbing it out of the microwave, it had burst and I got a splash of magma like gel that burned my wrist. Fortunately I have a lot of experience swearing silently during meetings, so I was able to control myself from screaming out obscenities and hurting my incisions in my mouth.

Tomorrow I see the Dr. for my 1st post-op appointment. i hope to get the stitches taken from hip as they are a constant annoyance.

I am getting more efficient "eating" with my syringe but I found it doesn't work on everything :/

Heavenly coffee, albeit missing my favorite cup






No matter how hard I try, I can't get that ice cream in the syringe


Heat packin' it

Day 4

Seems whatever higher power that is, has a sense of humor. Today, poor Fion woke up sick and had lost her voice....so now there are two of us in the house making grunt sounds and pointing at stuff. We both logged onto MSN messenger and chat while sitting next to each other. I actually like this because the speed of the conversations are then not dictated by my inability to speak.

Today was the best day in regards to suffering. I woke up at 6am unable to breathe again and suffered until around 9am when for some unknown reason, my sinuses opened up. I was feeling great all day then as quickly as they opened, they closed again and I was suffering. My guess is the swelling is still stabilizing and since I switched over to heat packs today, my sinuses are getting pulled all directions.

I went through the pictures and although they are horrible, there isn't any blood or anything that would make someone sick. I will post the progression until today although no one day is better or worse than the other really. My color looks best today but I am as swollen as ever. Keep in mind that I effectively took a baseball bat to my entire lower face.

Day 3 - home"bound"

Today started off better than all the last and I was cleared to leave my, as my Dr. put it, "crib". Fion had spruced the place up, adding a humidifier and a few other niceties from home. Mind you she was too worried about me to drive 20 minutes up to RB and I was terrified to be left alone with the attention-lacking staff, so she drove down the street and bought a new one.

I got my last couple of shots, drank some tomato juice through a syringe, showered, scared a few more people and then took my swollen head home. Fion is running around doing everything she can for me and I am just trying to stay comfortable.

I am gonna post a picture tomorrow of my swollen face but I will be sure to warn you not to look if you get queasy easily. I am a 165lb guy with a 350lb guy head. Wait..has something changed?

Day 2

Today was a much better day. I typed up everything that happened and between the note and Fion, the Dr. got a clear picture of what was going on. The nurse was trying to discourage me from getting morphine because "It slows your breathing". So of course, I try and tough it out which lead to the panicky moments where I felt like I was dieing. My Dr. wasn't too happy about this.

My Dr. basically said that I need to "preemptively" dope and keep the pain in control before it starts creeping up. They also gave me some anti-anxiety meds as well as a few other pain killers to add in the loop. I was pretty wasted all night.

My sinuses were still a wreck today so my Dr. shoved a suction tube down them to extract any blockages. That wasn't fun but I can now breathe (with the aide of some decongestants). I heard that we had some Santa Anna winds going so perhaps my dry hospital air is partly the cause. Fion went out and bought me a humidifier today just in case.

I scared some little kid that was walking around outside my room...I scared myself when I saw a mirror as well. My first thought was, "wow I look a lot like Fat Bastard" from Austin Powers. The swelling really is that bad. I also have a Bubba Gump lower lip going too. I have pictures somewhere of my broken jaw as a kid and my jaw was bigger than the rest of my face. This is same except that it is on both sides instead of one.

The liquid diet is going to be tough. I can't seem to stay interested enough to squirt chicken broth through a syringe with a tube attached to it.

That is all for now. It can only get better from here....

Day 1

I don't really know how to start this. I won't be putting any pictures up for a few days as I am in pretty bad shape. I am fortunately feeling better this morning, as I was sure I was going to die last night. Thankfully, Fion was here or else I don't think I would have survived the night. She really has been amazing.

Having your mouth wired shut, you really appreciate how vulnerable you are to a stuffy nose. My nose got plugged up this morning and I about had a panic attack. It took me an hour to calm down as I was sure I was going to suffocate. I also had an insane amount of congestion in my lungs and I couldn't cough to get it out. In hindsight, I would live with the damn pain of my jaw to have not gone through that.

The incompetence of the staff here at Sharp Memorial is maddening. Last night I needed a nurse as I was starting to feel nauseous. I pushed the "nurse" button on my bed and shortly thereafter, someone says, "hello...hello?...hello?" over the speaker on the bed. Obviously I can't reply. I push the button two more times and get a different person....same response. I am freaking out at this point and finally someone came in the room. Mind you I could have choked on my own vomit and been long dead by now.,....

All this happened in the hour that Fion was gone. I don't think I had ever been so relieved to see her. It was also great to have the laptop at this point so I could communicate. Writing down everything on a sheet of paper is not the way to go.

I am going to spend an extra night here in the hospital. I don't feel like going home yet even though the staff here is probably worse than having no one at all. Thank God for Fion.....

Pre-Surgery Consultation

Today is the final day before my surgery. I met with my Dr. this morning to discuss the decisions he made on the procedure and get all the information I will need to get through this. The reality of it hit me hardest when he said that I will be wired shut (actually rubber-banded shut) for 6 weeks - 2 of which I won't be able to even speak at all.



I had originally thought this would be a 2 week deal but the data I had was based on the simplest case. As it turns out, I am getting about twice as much because they have to move both my upper and lower jaw.



The upper teeth/jaw will get dropped by 4-5mm and rotated 1mm. Bone will be harvested from my hip to fill in the 4-5mm gap they create. The lower jaw will be advanced forward 4mm. My chin will be moved down and back about 3mm to try and maintain my current proportions (thankfully...I already have a strong chin and an additional 4mm would be a copyright violation of Jay Leno).

Tomorrow night I will be staying in the hospital so I probably won't be able to update the blog until at the earliest Monday. I obviously won't be taking calls for a few weeks but you can always call Fion to see how things went. Wish me luck!

Oh and being that I have only gained about 5 lbs in my massive eating changes since ending the cycling season, I panicked a little when he said 6 weeks of a liquid diet instead of 2. I have to give a huge thanks to Fion, Susanne and John Behrens for all the sympathy pounds they have gained helping me to eat like a "normal" person. To celebrate, we had pizza and ice cream for lunch:

First Entry

I decided to create this blog to document my orthodontic surgery for my friends and family. I am scheduled to go under the knife this Saturday (1/13/2007) to correct a life-long problem caused by a broken jaw at a young age and surely bad genetics. I plan to take pictures and update this regularly throughout my recovery.

A little history of the problem first. I broke my jaw around the age of 4 (mom correct me here please). Aside from a wonderfully scary halloween costume that year, I was gifted with some abnormal oral development. Even though my teeth were straight (mostly from orthodontics), my bite was completely off. A very prominent overbite as well as excessive interference on the side of my jaw trama resulted in a lot of problems in my later 20's.


It got to the point that I started to avoid eating certain foods as they exacerbated the constant clicking and catching I was getting in my TMJ (jaw joint). This is when my Dentist noted that my front teeth were now being knocked loose by my ever-collapsing bite. It was time to see the orthodontist for a second time in my life.

The ortho went over the treatment options and we basically agreed on the only path forward (short of capping all my teeth) was for about two years of braces followed by upper and lower jaw surgery. One of my biggest concerns, being a vain human, was that this procedure wouldn't adversely affect my appearances. Considering my already strong jaw and chin, moving my jaw down and forward had me thinking of "Mr. Incredible". My Dr. assured me that whatever asthetic worries I might have, they would be able to accommodate them.

The pictures below show what they are talking about:






















(Images taken from: http://www.universityoralsurgery.com/proc/proc_ortho.html)