Day 16 post op. I've been really trying to hold off making a dedicated post about comparison between surgery results since I am still swollen and haven't really seen the full revision results yet, but I can't help myself. Each day I am seeing more and more differences. The big one started with the pano.
The first pano on the left is about 6 days after my original surgery. It's a mangled mess. Both the surgical work and the ortho work. My teeth were all over the place post op, brackets were all sorts of broken. My teeth shifted and started to go all crooked again. Hardware is all crooked. The pano to the right is 5 days after revision. Everything is just so much straighter and neater. Not perfect, but way past my expectations for what I thought I was going to see on the first film. Like my pictures, the teeth in the xrays will never completely line up again thanks to the lower front incisor I had extracted as part of this round of ortho treatment.
The thing I really wanted to hold off making comparisons on is physical/aesthetic changes. I'm still swollen and will be for months, but the first huge chunk of swelling has dropped and I am already seeing differences. After the first surgery I had sunken in dimples on one side and bulged out with no dimples on the other. At first I chalked it up to swelling, and then later learned it was because my jaws were so offset and yawed out to the one side. I noticed about a week ago I was getting BOTH dimples back. Yes, I have both sides of my dimples back!! And my face is much more balanced too. The sunken in side is more full now, and both gonial angles looking more like the other again. I am seeing symmetry in my face again. Not that it was so bad before that strangers would look at me funny walking down the street, but it was for sure something that was noticeable to my closer friends and family, and especially to me. The other big change, that I could even see right away as soon as I woke up in the hospital, is I have my upper nasolabial area back!! That space between the bottom of your nose and your upper lip, it was WAY too full on me after my first surgeon moved my already too forward upper jaw another 4mm forward without my knowledge or permission. It's been the cause of a lot of strain in my face, and aesthetically unpleasing. I totally lost that little line that goes from your nose down to your lip, and now I have it back! And the strain is gone too. I really can't wait to see how this feels when even more swelling drops.
The thing I really wanted to hold off making comparisons on is physical/aesthetic changes. I'm still swollen and will be for months, but the first huge chunk of swelling has dropped and I am already seeing differences. After the first surgery I had sunken in dimples on one side and bulged out with no dimples on the other. At first I chalked it up to swelling, and then later learned it was because my jaws were so offset and yawed out to the one side. I noticed about a week ago I was getting BOTH dimples back. Yes, I have both sides of my dimples back!! And my face is much more balanced too. The sunken in side is more full now, and both gonial angles looking more like the other again. I am seeing symmetry in my face again. Not that it was so bad before that strangers would look at me funny walking down the street, but it was for sure something that was noticeable to my closer friends and family, and especially to me. The other big change, that I could even see right away as soon as I woke up in the hospital, is I have my upper nasolabial area back!! That space between the bottom of your nose and your upper lip, it was WAY too full on me after my first surgeon moved my already too forward upper jaw another 4mm forward without my knowledge or permission. It's been the cause of a lot of strain in my face, and aesthetically unpleasing. I totally lost that little line that goes from your nose down to your lip, and now I have it back! And the strain is gone too. I really can't wait to see how this feels when even more swelling drops.
There will definitely continue to be changes as swelling drops and things settle. I will be able to compare the bite better once I get the splint off too. But for now, these are the things already strikingly obvious in a round 1 vs. round 2 comparison this soon post op. I'll make sure to update when able to do so. Hopefully my ortho does some new records and I can compare the original post op with the new ones.
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