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Arch Bar Removal Trip Blog

Posted by westernjoe on September 08, 2005 at 17:58:38:

I've updated my blog for those of you that are following.
Here is the text:


We flew to San Jose from Texas on Labor day and drove the short 15min trip up to Palo Alto the day before the arch bar removal (Sept 6th).

Some doctors do arch bar removal in their office but I've heard from some of them and it's not a happy thing.
Dr P does this in the hospital as a short surgery and I was completely knocked out to make it easier on everybody.

It was a non-event - no pain, nothing. Upper Jaw was numb for the rest of the night but I was still able to eat some.
It's treated like any surgery and you have to go through admissions, put on the fancy dress and the whole bit.

I saw him before surgery and asked him how many bimax's (MMA) he had done that day: answer - 2!.

The surgery was done at 4:30pm and I hadn't had anything to eat since midnight and that was by far the most difficult part.

The arch bars are connected to the teeth with wires.
The arch bars are also connected to the bone above and below with suspension wires and all this is now gone.
My mouth is 'normal' now and I think it might be slightly more comfortable to sleep too. My upper lip is not protruding like it did before which is good.
I look fairly normal at this point but still have a very slight amount of swelling on one side of the jaw.

The next day I felt totally normal after a good night of sleep and we drove up through San Francisco,
across the Golden Gate Bridge to tour the Marin County Civic center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - Awesome!

After that we headed back to Dr Powell's office for a post-op XRay. The lateral shows my airway still huge but slightly narrower than the immediate post-op XRay of a month ago. He said it was normal and that I was still 'over corrected' meaning "BIG AIRWAY". They also show that in addition to the plates, there are some wires above the front teeth that are going to stay - I didn't know that and it's no big deal.

We chatted for quite some time and looked over the XRays.
He showed me how to use tongue depressors to wedge my jaw open gently to gain opening. My current jaw opening is 19mm and he said he had never had a patient that didn't regain full opening.

He wants me to have a sleep study within 6 months for the record.

At this point I believe I'm fixed.
I still need time for my sleep to normalize.
Almost every night is good.
The ones that are not good can be connected to caffiene, late night drumming, or lack of decent nutrition (protien).
I'm switching to Monthly updates.

Thanks to all.
wj (Roger from Texas)

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