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Jul. 5th, 2013 11:25 pmSo, my brother had orthognathic surgery today. My brother and I were both born with cleft palates that we had fixed when we were babies. Nonetheless, we've both had some pesky side effects (shitty vision, mostly). And one of those things for him (almost for me, but I somehow managed to avoid this part) was a weirdly developed chin/jaw. So, after years of braces and prep for this, a bunch of arguments over insurance and confusion between doctors, it was today. I stayed home for all of this to stay with the canines, but he and my parents left the house around 5 this morning to head downtown to the hospital. He had to be there by 6, and they started the surgery at 8:30, said it would take 6-8 hours.
They were planning to do 4 things:
-Break his jaw in 2? 3? places and readjust it so it was better aligned. They'd place a splint at the roof of his mouth to keep it all in place and use heavy-duty rubberbands to keep his jaw mostly closed while it healed. (Note: really good, rather funny blog along the same lines here if anyone is interested).
-Remove wisdom teeth (only 3).
-Fix partially deviated septum.
-Cosmetic chin reconstruction stuff?
All in all, it's a bitch of a surgery and involves weeks of liquid diet on syringe and then mushable liquids and all sorts of fun stuff.
But, of course, this is my family, so something had to not go to plan.
The surgery ended up taking 9 hours. They finished around 5:30, I think. The complication: wisdom teeth - which was supposed to be the easier-ish part of the surgery, I'd imagine - were fucking hell to get out. I don't know why they were surprised by this because my dentist had to cut some of my baby teeth in half when he was pulling them because the roots were so deep. Then, since this had been so complicated, they opted to remove the splint they already had in and just wire his jaw shut, which takes away nearly all of the flexibility the splint/bands would have allowed and has also altered the projected timeline in ways that I haven't been informed of yet.
Mom's staying the night at the hospital - he'll be there til at least Sunday, maybe Monday. And despite being told they'd have a private room, it is not, in fact, a private room and she almost couldn't stay the night. Strange.
But, yeah, superfun times here.
They were planning to do 4 things:
-Break his jaw in 2? 3? places and readjust it so it was better aligned. They'd place a splint at the roof of his mouth to keep it all in place and use heavy-duty rubberbands to keep his jaw mostly closed while it healed. (Note: really good, rather funny blog along the same lines here if anyone is interested).
-Remove wisdom teeth (only 3).
-Fix partially deviated septum.
-Cosmetic chin reconstruction stuff?
All in all, it's a bitch of a surgery and involves weeks of liquid diet on syringe and then mushable liquids and all sorts of fun stuff.
But, of course, this is my family, so something had to not go to plan.
The surgery ended up taking 9 hours. They finished around 5:30, I think. The complication: wisdom teeth - which was supposed to be the easier-ish part of the surgery, I'd imagine - were fucking hell to get out. I don't know why they were surprised by this because my dentist had to cut some of my baby teeth in half when he was pulling them because the roots were so deep. Then, since this had been so complicated, they opted to remove the splint they already had in and just wire his jaw shut, which takes away nearly all of the flexibility the splint/bands would have allowed and has also altered the projected timeline in ways that I haven't been informed of yet.
Mom's staying the night at the hospital - he'll be there til at least Sunday, maybe Monday. And despite being told they'd have a private room, it is not, in fact, a private room and she almost couldn't stay the night. Strange.
But, yeah, superfun times here.
