I decided to have surgery because I was dissatisfied with my protruding mouth and the relatively large lower face. I took all the photos with the default camera because I wanted to show them honestly. To start with the conclusion, the recovery process was harder than I expected, but I am still very satisfied with the surgical result. This is definitely not a surgery to take lightly.
Photos before surgery: Since two-jaw surgery involves shaving and moving the upper and lower jaws, I was told that to smooth things out after the movement, chin and square-jaw surgery would inevitably be included, so I ended up having contouring surgery as well. I also had a severe receding chin.
I looked into a total of five places for two-jaw surgery, and the reason I chose Yangyundol was that I felt Director Kang’s personality and approach suited me best among the hospitals I had researched so far, and I judged that he was the person most capable of matching my desired conditions while still prioritizing safety, so I chose this hospital.
If you look at reviews on this community, you can see mixed opinions about whether the director is kind or not, but from my personal perspective it was exactly right. From this, I think there are hospitals that suit each person. It may not suit someone else, but it suited me well.
I thought they tried their best to match what could be matched, and for the difficult parts they explained that, for these and those reasons, it might not turn out well. The staff were truly kind. They were very kind during post-op care too, and this was the first place where the speed and accuracy of replies on KakaoTalk were this fast and so sincere. (Especially during the surgery care period, I was really grateful to Staff Kim. Haha. If it hadn’t been for this person, it would have been truly hard. If I had been in the director’s position, I would have given a big bonus.)
==================================== Post-op hospitalization review for 2 nights and 3 days ================================= After the two-jaw surgery, the hospital stay was 2 nights and 3 days. This was the hardest period.
Even when I had a wisdom tooth removed, I had almost no swelling, and even when I got injured while exercising, I was the kind of person who barely swelled or recovered quickly compared with others, so I was confident. But this time was different. From the first day, my face was hugely swollen. Maybe I should have exercised more to lose body fat...
The staff said I needed to drink a lot of water to recover, but on the first day the urinary catheter had been used during anesthesia, so because of that I had very severe pain when urinating. Even trying to pee a little caused a burning sensation, making me afraid to use the bathroom. The feeling of burning made even urinating scary.
On top of that, my mouth felt like it was not my own, so when I leaned on something, saliva kept leaking out, and if I swallowed liquid even a little wrong, I kept coughing up blood-streaked phlegm. My tongue, the area around my mouth, and my jaw were so swollen that even swallowing was hard. It took hours to finish the soy milk the hospital gave me.. Since I could not open my mouth, I drank soy milk and water and other liquids with a syringe. In practice, I hardly drank any water in the hospital. If I drank water with a syringe, I kept coughing up blood-streaked phlegm, and swallowing was too hard.
The hospital says eating and drinking well is good for recovery, but I just could not do that. I cannot imagine how hard it would have been if the Yangyundol staff had not been so kind. (I do not usually write things like this, but they really were very kind.)
When I was in the hospital, I could not sleep deeply. At most I slept about 2 hours? I kept waking up because I was coughing or felt like I could not breathe. I had already been told in the past that my nose was small and my nasal passages were narrow, so maybe that was why breathing was difficult. Even a small blood scab blocking my nose made it hard to breathe, and the psychological fear of “what if I cannot breathe” made things even harder.
I also felt sorry that I seemed to be making the staff suffer in the middle of the night, but that feeling faded in about 2 seconds before survival instinct, so it was meaningless. I do not even know how many times I called for suction. It was a period when I was very afraid that I would suffocate because my nose was blocked.
Because my tongue was swollen and I could not swallow saliva, it was painful even when saliva and blood-streaked phlegm blocked my throat.
Most patients and staff had gone home by around 9 p.m., and at that time they told me to walk around inside the hospital, but since I could not eat anything I had no energy, and it was so cold that I could not do it for long.
Blanket inside is the best. Outside the blanket is dangerous.
=========================== After discharge ====================== Even on days 3 to 5 after surgery, the swelling did not go down. They said day 5 was the peak of the swelling.
I did my best with ice packs and the compression band as much as possible.
On day 6, the swelling started to go down little by little, and from day 7 onward it visibly decreased day by day.
Because my mouth could not fully close (open bite), I fixed my jaws with rubber bands, so for 2 to 3 weeks I drank almost only liquids. (Soy milk, chocolate milk, fruit juice, etc.) Thanks to that, I was forced into a diet of more than 5 kg.
After my temporomandibular joint stabilized, I mainly ate soft foods such as silken tofu, steamed eggs, and noodles. My jaw still did not open very well, and my tongue did not move freely, so food often got stuck between the gums and the inside of the mouth, which felt unpleasant. During that period, it was hard to shake off the discomfort unless I brushed my teeth and gargled right after eating. I would say the tongue movement was not free for about 3 weeks to 1 month.
Now, about 1 month to 1.5 months later, I can eat rice dishes too, and the swelling in the oral walls and tongue has mostly gone down, so the range of foods I can eat has expanded a lot. Still, I have to avoid hard or chewy foods. The moment I chew, I instinctively feel that this would put strain on the jaw joint and the upper and lower jaw bones.
There are still many restrictions on exercise, and opening my mouth still feels more uncomfortable than before, so I think I need to keep monitoring recovery for a while longer.
Overall, compared with before the surgery, I am quite satisfied. I do not seem to have any particular side effects yet. But some of the people close to me still look a little unsure, so I think I need to see how much more the swelling goes down. T_T I am also wondering whether that counts as a positive reaction or not.
They say I look like a different person just from the lower face.. I am curious what it will be like once the remaining swelling goes down a bit more.