Americanuck

Today was another big milestone for Sean, he had his first post-surgical visit with the orthodontist and treatment begins in earnest yet again. The next phase of treatment is wearing elastics day and night to help pull the back molars back out.

The orthognathic surgery changed the position of  jaw and along with it his teeth. This phase of treatment is to begin the realignment of his teeth now that his lower jaw is in the “right” place.

Everyone at the office exclaimed at the dramatic change they saw in Sean since they last saw him. I really can’t wait to see what he will look like once this is all done!

It is amazing how much he’s changed since we began, how much he’s growing up! Just to give some perspective this first picture was taken in Feb 2006 right at the beginning.

The following two pictures were taken the night before surgery. 

These last pictures were just taken the other night. As you can see there is a small amount of residual swelling but basically it’s all gone. Sean is back to eating pretty much everything he wants he has healed so fast, way ahead of the curve. Everyone is different and he healed at the top of the scale, in fact his surgeon said he was the fastest he’s seen. The only things he’s banned from eating  now is pretty much anything that was already banned for braces. He was just happy he’s allowed to eat bacon now. The no bacon thing was pure unadulterated torture in Sean’s world.

I know it can be a scary thing preparing yourself, and/or your child to go through this but it’s all worth it in the end. Sean’s really happy with how it has gone and is really happy that the “worst” of it all is behind him now.

Well it’s Sunday today, five days post-surgery and we’re starting to see Sean’s sense of humour return. He’s been feeling down, mostly from food deprivation. Despite what one would assume from how slender he is, the boy is an EATING MACHINE.

Seeing Pizza, hamburger commercials or god forbid, anyone talks about bacon he goes into a funk. He misses potato chips and all the other various snack foods. He is sick to death of sugary stuff, particularly ice-cream.

He has been eating soft fish and mashed potatoes so at least he is getting something of more substance, although chewing is verboten he is allowed to eat anything that doesn’t require chewing if he can handle it and boy can he.

The swelling has gone enough for me to be allowed to post a photograph. We agreed that no photo that doesn’t pass his inspection goes online. He is interested in helping any other kid through this, sometimes knowing what others have gone through helps, it did us… but it only goes so far.

You can still see some swelling and the light bruising on his chin on either side where the surgery took place but he didn’t really have much in the way of bruising.

His first follow-up visit with the surgeon is on Wednesday. There will be another to follow in two weeks and then hopefully only one more to follow. At that point he will instruct us when we should start the orthodontics portion of our program back up again for the “fine-tuning” of the bite.

The appointment to admit Sean to the hospital was for 12:30 but we made excellent time. We got there plenty early and we sat for a while in the waiting area before admitting called his name and got him braceletted and moved into the waiting area for day surgery.

He was a bit stressed when I told him I had no underwear on during my only surgical experience. He was more concerned about being bare-added than the actual surgery. When they called him to go change into his oh-so-cool surgical gown he was more than pleased to find out he got to keep on the drawers and even better, they gave him a robe to wear over the gown. He did find the outfit pretty humorous as did we, especially the green surgical socks under the paper booties.

One nurse came in and took his medical history and tried to insert an IV but didn’t have much success. Another guy came along and joked about how he could do it in his sleep Sean’s veins were so big and Sean jokingly said “Please don’t” and the guy laughed and said “A sense of humour good stuff, I like that”. He also got Sean the pre-surgical pills which were basically three Tylenol and an anti-acid pill to help with taking tylenol on an empty stomach. See Sean wasn’t allowed to eat past midnight the night before and there was no liquids 3 hours before check in time. Taking an analgesic before surgery helps with post-op pain and apparently there is some theories about it stopping pain paths from forming during surgery. Interesting stuff.

Leaving him as he was walking into the OR was one of the hardest things to do. I was trying to not get sniffly or dwell too much on it. We went to grab something to eat and then headed back out to the car and read instead of sitting in the waiting room. The doctor was going to call me on my cell when the surgery was over, and you can’t have a cell on in the hospital.

It was somewhere around an hour when I got the call that the surgery went great and his bite was now perfect. He needed to spend 1-2 hours in recovery and then they would move him to his ward. What a relief! We waited about 1.5 more hours and then headed up to his ward. There we found him awake and a little bit dazed but lucid. He had basically just arrived in his room and turns out he got a semi-private room by luck. There was a chance of up to one more person in the room but as luck would have it he got it to himself the whole night.

He was a bit swollen and sore, they gave him some morphine and anti-swelling meds and we visited for a while and did a crossword together. It was awful leaving him there too, but I kept telling myself I was lucky it was only the one night. Still tough though.

This morning we found him a LOT more swollen but in fairly good spirits. He wanted to leave BADLY. We got him to the car and settled him into his seat with a pillow and a neck pillow and drove towards home. He was feeling a bit nauseated on the way home so Tom pulled over. He didn’t get sick though and the wave passed. Luckily we weren’t that far from home at that point. It was a long way from our place to the hospital in Vancouver (45 mins to an hour depending on traffic sometimes) when you’re nauseous that can seem like forever.

When we got home we refreshed his ice packs and he took a look at himself in the mirror and was horrified by what he saw. He said he looks like he’s wearing Hollywood fat suit makeup. I think he’s bothered more by the swelling than anything. He is uncomfortable and pissy that it will last a while. The doctor said up to 3 weeks before it’s completely gone but the worst will be up to the first 48 hours. He wasn’t thrilled to hear that it could still yet be worse before it gets better.

So far he’s had two chocolate shakes and a cup of jell-o along with some ginger ale. He said the doctor said if he can tolerate it to try eating some soft fish tomorrow so we will give that a shot. Maybe some mashed potatoes too.

Well we’re relieved that we’ve got to this point and as I’ve said to him, it’s all healing now.

Just a brief update for now. Sean did well in the surgery. He spend the night at the hospital :(  but we’re going to get this this morning. I have to call to see when he’s ready to be picked up.

More later.

Well, we are on the home stretch now. Sean’s surgery is scheduled for the week after this coming and in anticipation of his diet of milkshakes and other mushy things I went out and bought a milkshake maker. Yeah it’s a fugly green but whatever, I don’t expect it will last that long, I mean the sucker is made out of PLASTIC. I remember the days when small appliances were made out of metal. geesh.

It had it’s maiden voyage on Friday. I mean we HAD to try it our right? I was experimenting with the amount of milk vs. ice-cream and syrup and I think I got the right amount of thickness. Straws will be a no-no after the surgery as you don’t want to cause any stress to the surgical site, after all there will be stitches in there. I plan on adding some protein powder to the shakes and also supplement with ‘Boost’ or another type of meal replacement, of course also in liquid form.

I wonder how long it will take before the novelty of milkshakes, pudding, jell-o and all the pop you can drink will wear off. He’s gonna be off solids for a while anyway and even after that we’re talking scrambled eggs and fish as far as “solid” food goes. This boy despite appearances eats like a pig and constantly. I’m sure visions of pizza and Chinese food will be dancing in his head before long, not to mention chips and other snacky foods.

I’m also REALLY looking forward to my time off work, I have never taken three weeks in a row ever. The first week wasn’t planned, it was added on when Sean’s surgery was scheduled. We had really no idea when it was going to happen, it depended on how he progressed with his braces so in a way it was handy that it was scheduled around my already booked vacation as I would have had to have taken the time off after it anyway.

I’m just sorry that the vacation Sean is having with his family isn’t exactly fun and games. Well hopefully once he’s on his feet we can take some day trip to take photos around town, we all enjoy that. Depending on how he does and how well he heals up, once he goes over to his Father’s, Tom and I may try to sneak a few days away if we can find a good last-minute deal. If not, no big, we can try to swing something sometime in the future for the two of us. At least we had our vacation at Seascape on Monterey Bay in March. Ahhhh all that beachy goodness… *sigh*