Then and now

Yeah I have a chin!

Well we are up to day 11 and the swelling has gone down quite a bit. My left side is still more swollen than the right, but I am beginning to look a little more like myself.

Here is a before shot my dad sent me from last Christmas, below is a shot of me yesterday.

One week after surgery

Here I am after one week. i am still very swollen along my jaw line and under my chin especially. If you enlarge the frontal view you can see yellow bruising under my chin and down my neck. I am able to move my lower lip a little more. Still have a lisp when I talk though. I have stopped taking pain pills and I feel MUCH better. Can't wait until the swelling is all gone!

Day 3

So I have been told that the third day is the worst, and I hope that is the truth. I don't think the skin on my face could stretch any more. Here is an attempt at a smile. From the side you can see how swollen my neck is.
Here are some beautiful flowers my dad brought me all the way from Ecuador. Thanks daddy. Nick is enjoying taking pictures of them, as I am not as willing a subject.

home from the hospital

So here I am at day 1 after the surgery. Obviously looking a little swollen. This is what I call my "Jay Leno face".
Doc says tomorrow should be a little more swollen, then start to go down about day 3 or 4. Can't wait.

Came home from the hospital today. Feeling “better”. Last night was awful, a mix of sleeping and waking up from the pain. My pain management has been better today though and I am able to get up and walk around. Having finishing finals the morning before the surgery (finished at 9, surgery at noon) I was very cooperative with the deep breathing exercises, rolling my ankles and walking around- since both my finals (pathology & microbiology) dealt a lot with blood clotting, bacterial infections etc. I’m oober paranoid.

Nick has been a great. He blends my food, wipes my mouth and keeps me “laughing”, more like a gurgling sound at this point. I have rubber bands on my teeth now (and they will remain there for ~8 weeks so that my jaw doesn’t relapse), but I can mumble fairly audibly and Nick is very patient. He is also doing a great job as my personal photographer, so that I have lots of pictures to post on this blog.

No feeling in my chin yet, but my lower lip hurts so I'm thinking that's a good sign.

In the hospital

(nick writing) Kari is doing well. As I am writing this she is sleeping in her hospital room. She asked that I take a few pictures so that she, and you, could see the/her progress.

(back to Kari) this is how I eat now (and for the next 6-8 weeks). Lots of fun since I can't feel my bottom lip very well, it all runs down my face (very flattering). So far have been pleased w/ the hospital food, had some great smashed pears and malt-o-meal.

My new favorite phrase:
"how many millileters would you like for lunch?"

Coming up

Just a bit about the surgery. Here is a tracing of an individual with class 2 malocclusion. My personal tracing would be similar, except that I am not having surgery involving the maxilla. You can see how retruded the mandible is compared to the rest of the facial skeleton.


The BSSO involves sectioning the mandible and sliding it forward, careful not to damage the Inf. alveolar nerve (resulting in parasthesia to the lower lip and tongue- meaning you would loose feeling to those areas supplied by the nerve).


After sliding the mandible forward, a plate and screws are used to hold everything in place while the bone re-grows to fill in the empty space. The plate and screws are left in place - and no, it won't set off the metal detectors at the airport (I asked).

The second half

And now for the second arch. I was so excited to get my bottom arch banded, every step closer to being ready for surgery was beyond exciting.

The first half

After about a million preliminary appointments we finally got brackets placed (February 2007). As my maxillary teeth had shifted the most, and would take the longest to move, we started there first. This picture was taken about a month after placement. As you can tell, my teeth are almost aligned already. I was a little afraid at how quickly they moved, since moving teeth too fast can cause root resorption. (however, radiographs taken since, don't show any sign of it, phew). At this point, my maxillary arch was about the same size as my mandibular arch, so my teeth were occluding all wrong. A quad helix was placed on my palate to widen the arch. A word on the quad helix. It wasn't necessarily painful, but made eating a nightmare. Anything I bit into got wrapped around it, especially fruit. Also, I could never get used to talking with it and always sounded like my mouth was full of food. Above and beyond however was the experience of flossing with all that metal in my mouth. Weaving the floss through my arch wire and then through the quad arms was impossible. On average I think it took about 10 minutes just to floss my maxillary teeth. Needless to say I didn't floss everyday, if it weren't for Superfloss, it probably would have never happened.

The beginning cont.

Here's a look from the "side". You can see that my anterior teeth flare out towards my lip, and my laterals have moved back. It's not really a great look at my profile (as I am good at avoiding profile shots), but you can tell that my chin is set back quite a ways.

The beginning

My brother and I last Christmas (2006)- isn't He handsome? Here's a picture of my teeth before the second round of braces. First round was in high school, but I failed to get my wisdom teeth out and my teeth moved. You can see that my canines are flared out quite a bit, and my maxillary arch looks flared in general. So here we go again.