Freedom! Terrible freedom!

My braces came off today! Huzzah!

My doc doesn't do it in house; he's does it off-shore over at the hospital. Not sure it saves anybody any money, but I don't care. I'm all for being *completely* sedated during the process. I hated having packing pulled out of my nose following my brain surgery, I despise it when they shove that fiber optic camera down my nose tot check out my airways, and really, the thought of getting to live through the sensation of them pulling WIRE out of my FACE was just too much. Hells no.

The proceedure only took about 25 minutes, if I understand correctly. However, you still have to go and register at the hospital, wait your turn, then get dressed and prepped and go through all the nurses, then wait for a room to open -- yeah, we got to the hospital about 1010, and didn't leave until after 2pm. Oh well.

Wasn't mentally prepared for the whole pre-op thing. I'd had a very different expectation in my head about how they were going to do it and I kind of lost my shit a bit at the hospital. All of the prep was basically the same as, oh, say, BRAIN SURGERY and full-on JAW SURGERY, and I had been picturing something more along the lines of staying in my regular clothes, getting an IV, and leaning back in some glorified dentist chair with my doc and an assistant - possibly two - at his side. Brought up a lot of stuff for me, you might imagine.

Once I had a little time to cool my heels I calmed down and got into the correct mindset. I was still a bit tensde (ok, a lot) when I got my IV, but the anesthesiologist (sp?) was very understanding. In fact, it turns out he remembered me from the actual jaw surgery. Small hospital. (Joke. Stanford.) I didn't have general anesthesia; I got something called a 'conscious sedative'. Don't care what it was called -- it still knocked me out cold. I remember getting over onto the table and then BAM! Gone. Totally fine by me. I think I actually fell asleep on top of it, because I was out much longer than advertised in the recovery room. Tee. :)

Got some novocane (sp?) during the surgery too. I'm more numb following this proceedure that I have been at any other point over the last 5 weeks. Can't really tell a difference in my lower lip/chin, but there was so much injected into the top jaw that the tip of my nose went numb. Still don't really have any feeling up there yet -- and its after 10pm!! Its also really throwing of my food/beverage consumption skills; I'd gotten pretty handy at eating with baby spoons and drinking from a glass -- I totally had to revert back to the feeding bags because stuff was just running/falling out of my mouth. Very not pretty.

Its of course fanTAStic to have all of that metal out of my mouth. The achey is already noticibly less (Although that may be the novocane...) I also don't have those bands blocking my tongue anymore, AND the band that crossed my front teeth (pix to follow at some point) no longer slips out of place constantly to ride on my gums painfully. A-MEN, sister! But its funny what you get used to. Even with the bands gone, I still totally favor the side of my mouth I had to eat/dringk fro with them in. And I've noticed my tongue is still searching out the front band to push it off of the gums and back onto the tooth. Wonder how long it'll take for all of that to stop?

Oh, I got more xrays taken today pre-proceedure as well today, too. Everything is still looking good, and my airway looks GREAT! It looks even wider that it did in the last xray. Doc says that's because its had more time to heal and a lot of normal post-surgery swelling has gone down. Its kind of ironic because my sleep has been for SHIT this last week and a half, and I've definitely noticed the sensation that air was no way going through as smoothly as it had immediately post surgery. I had him take a look and sure enough, my tonsils are trying to take over my skull again and are blocking my airway. Looking more and more like those'll have to come out in the future. Dammit.

Doc also removed a little scar tissuue up around the incision line above my front teeth, Not a big deal - some stuff had built up around the stitches (not infected or anything) but it was making that area very painful if it was ever stretched. So when he yanked out of the (poorly) dissolving stitches today he did some clean up and expects that it will all heal nicely now. Again, thank god for 'conscious sedation'.

Oh, and I get to start working on Real Food in about 3 weeks. Joy!

Over all, it was a Good Day. :)