Day 8

Today was my one week post-op with my surgeon down in Houston. We live about 45 min north of the med center in Houston so it is quite a trek down there for each appointment. He took off my old elastics which were super tight and right at the front and back of my mouth and replaced them with longer ones that go from my back molar to my canines. So now I have a little more wiggle room. He said I am still pretty swollen but not abnormally so. Apparently most of the swelling will go down over the next month. Yippee! I get to be a chipmunk for a good long while! He also took more x-rays and said everything looks good.

He answered a few of my questions:
~ it is safe to use a water pick even though I was worried hitting stitches with them. He said they were originally invented for wound cleaning so not to worry. Hmm, I learn something new everyday.
~ I can take Ambien woohoo! Hopefully I will actually sleep tonight. Apparently almost all patients have this same problem and it takes weeks to get your body back on schedule.
~ I will come back every week for 4 weeks and get new elastics and check alignment. As you can see in my pictures below, I got promoted from kangaroos to penguins ;-) He said I won't be in elastics under his directive forever, after a few weeks it will be up to my orthodontist

The trip to Methodist hospital was interesting. This massive flu epidemic had my mom all worried about be catching something because hospitals are full of sick people and so close after surgery, the flu would be about the worst thing that could happen. So I talked her out of making me wear a SARS mask(because that is ridiculous) and I agreed to keep my face covered with a scarf. I call this look the pashmina terrorist.

The pain isn't too bad anymore, its just pure discomfort from swelling but I'm used to it now. It may actually be a weird feeling when I'm NOT swollen anymore! I decided to stop taking the hydrocodone in hopes of getting my sleep back on track. And now that the anti-inflammatories are done, I'm just on the antibiotics. Only 8 pills a day instead of 17!