4 Weeks Post Surgery

Hard to believe it's almost been a month already, but here we are at 4 weeks. Sorry it's long, I am writing this with future SARPE "victims" in mind!

For starters, there is only faint bruising left on the left side; the right side seems to be gone completely.

Some swelling but I think you'll see in the photos below that I look more or less normal to the untrained eye. I can feel I'm still swollen when I wash my face. My sinuses are still tender and feel like they're filled with air or something.

The numbness has really come down this week, which I am happy about. My cheek apples were the most numb before and now it feels like they have most of the feeling back, if not all of it. My gums are still numb and there is about 90% feeling in my nostrils.

Front teeth are still throbbing hourly or so. I took 2 Percocet last night as I overdid it with the chewing yesterday, and even that makes no difference with the throbbing.

So, I've been overdoing it with chewing lately and I think it's a bad idea. My teeth, even my lower teeth, are still tender and chewing harder foods makes them just ache. However, I am happy to say that my palate is starting to feel more stable, even just in the past few days. Yawning was uncomfortable as I think your palate stretches a bit when you yawn, and the RPE obviously doesn't. I was feeling a lot of pressure on my teeth when yawning. I also seem to be able to push my lower jaw forward without any pressure on my palate anymore.

My lisp also seems to be improving, and people are quick to tell me I don't sound as bad as I probably think. I find because my voice is different due to the lisp, I pay a lot of attention to sound of my voice. Annoyingly enough, the hardest thing to say is my own name, leading to a lot of repeats of it, which causes me to feel self-conscious.

I'm having a hard time keeping my spirits up about not getting braces until possibly June. I wasn't self-conscious about the gap at first but now I notice myself trying to keep my mouth closed whenever there are people around who don't know I had surgery. My facial muscles are starting to come back and I'm a person who smiles a lot, so I know the gap is becoming more and more visible as my lip gains more movement. However, I will say that compared to ALL of the blogs I've looked at, I have the smallest gap. Some of them have a gap as wide as a front tooth, if not bigger.

Speaking of smiling, it's a very weird feeling. I don't know if it's because my front teeth are pushed forward more, because of the incision, because of the numbness, because my smile is wider, or all of the above, but I feel a lot of pressure on my upper lip when I smile. It feels like my lip is going to split open. I never realized how much I smile until this, and I find myself forcing a straight face just to avoid the discomfort.

Okay so that's enough talk for now, here are the photos.

I've noticed that the centre of my top lip lines up weird with my septum. It's more noticeable when you can see the gap, which is not centred, either.
Looking much better from the side.
5.5mm gap
I can finally smile like a normal person, gap notwithstanding. You can see here my septum and gap don't line up perfectly. I'm assuming braces will fix that back up.
Before and after...not the hugest difference but still noticeable. You can see by the centre of the expander how much wider my palate is. Also, you can see a big difference comparing the width between my front 6 teeth, especially my lateral incisors and canines. I'm excited to get the expander off; it's going to feel like a total real estate upgrade!


Before and after smile...obviously a work in progress! I think things are looking a bit wider; look how far apart my canine teeth are now! Both these photos were me smiling my widest, so you can see on the right I still don't have full control of my facial muscles.