I had double jaw surgery and anterior chin surgery in early February this year. It hasn’t been long since the surgery, but it seems like there are many people in this community who are thinking about double jaw surgery or facial contouringㅠ The stress I went through before surgery, the things people worry about, and so on are things I also felt, so I know them well. I thought it might be a small help? so I’ll write a review.
-Reason I had double jaw surgery I also thought about it for 6-7 years before deciding on surgery. Before surgery, my face was long and horse-like, I had protruding mouth, a slightly protruding lower jaw, facial asymmetry, and most of all, I looked older than my age. My friends would get their IDs checked, but I wouldn’t, and even though there is a big age gap between me and my older brother, when strangers saw us outside, they would think I was the older sister... I had been under a lot of stress about this since I was young, and after becoming an adult I think I started looking into double jaw surgery a lot. Even while researching, I was scared of pain after surgery and side effects, so I don’t even know how many times I gave up and then started looking into it again. So I kept being stressed for years, and after worrying about it for years, I finally made up my mind and had the surgery recently. There are many people who can’t tell their parents before surgery, but I had been stressed for a long time, and my parents knew that, so when I said I was going to get surgery, thankfully they encouraged me rather than stopping me.
-Surgery day to recovery process, briefly When the surgery date I had waited and waited for was finally one day away, honestly I wasn’t as nervous as I expected. I had kept controlling my mindset and thinking the surgery would go well, and because the director is very firm and I had seen how confident he was about the surgery, I just spent the time imagining, “How will I have changed after surgery?”
Before going into surgery, I saw the director one more time and then went into the operating room. Even though I had done all that mindset control, once I lay down on the operating table, it was scaryㅋㅋㅋㅋ When the anesthetic injection went in, I thought, “What if the anesthesia doesn’t work or I wake up in the middle?” and at the same time, red sun!ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ After surgery, I really didn’t feel severe pain. But I was so sleepy that even though I tried and tried to wake up, I kept falling asleep. The nurses kept waking me up in between, saying I had to get up to expel the anesthetic gas from my body, but I remember repeatedly falling asleep as if fainting. In the end, the gas didn’t come out of my body properly, so I had dry heaves and my head started hurting, which was really hard. If you do have surgery, you have to fight off the sleep...
Anyway, on the first day, the nausea was so bad that I couldn’t even get the pain-control injection, but there wasn’t much pain, so I was okay without it. Maybe the director did the surgery well, or maybe I’m suited to surgery, but the swelling and bruising weren’t overwhelmingly bad. There was almost no bruising, to the point that it was surprisingㅎㅎ On the second day, removing the blood drain hurt the most. But it’s over after an “ugh!” and 2-3 seconds, so don’t worry too much... After spending about 3 days in the hospital like that, I came home. After discharge, the three hardest things were: nasal congestion, the wafer + intermaxillary fixation, and taking antibiotic pillsㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ The nasal congestion cleared after exactly one week of suffering, and the wafer and intermaxillary fixation feel stuffy but you gradually get used to them. Taking antibiotic pills for a week was so hard that I gagged while swallowing them and it was chaosㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
I had the stitches removed in week 2, and I had read so many posts saying you see hell when removing stitches, so I went in scared, but maybe because I was too scared, it didn’t hurt much. The stitches around the philtrum just stung a bit? But the clinic staff said the pain people feel varies a lot from person to person. After the stitches were removed, the wafer also changed to a removable one, so I could eat porridge and even ramen instead of only liquid foods, and eating food that felt like real food made me feel human again and happy..
I’m now at one month, so I decided to start orthodontic treatment. As someone who likes eating and talking, the hardest part after surgery was probably not being able to eat properly and not being able to speak properly because of the intermaxillary fixation ㅠㅠ And as for swelling, to my eyes it still looks like there is major swelling left... but my family says the major swelling already seems to be gone, so I think it’s gradually getting better. It’s still only one month, so I guess it can be called the early stage after surgery, right? I want time to pass quickly so I can see even all the minor swelling completely go down!!!!