Posted by HVMMA guy on January 04, 2008 at 18:03:41:In Reply to: Re: MMA recuperation posted by seattlebill on January 04, 2008 at 08:16:47:
Bill,
Thanks for the info. I will definitely be looking at what is the best way to communicate my dissatisfaction with the hospital soon.I do agree with the lack of efficacy for vicodin. It really didnt do much for more than an hour to 2.5 max when i was really hurting. At best it was masking some of the pain but never got rid of all of it for a long enough duration of time. I was actually hoping for Oxycontin or something stronger at the beginning.
The sad thing is the surgeon seems to have done a good to great job and hes Harvard trained. Hes done a ton of these and the background check I and my wife did came up well for him. The problem is hes probably close to 60 years old and seems to be an old school doctor. Hes foreign born and I assume hes just from the school of thinking that pain is overstated by patients, its good for healing, etc. Dunno?!?!
I will be using the pain specialist, b/c when i go to the orthodontist for "tuneups"; my teeth just kill me for at least a week. I take ibuprofen or some otc medication and its similar to vicodin, when i came home 3+ weeks ago. The otc stuff lasts for a few hours of pain control and thats it. I cant wait for the 6 months to be over to get rid of the braces for good. Right now my biggest source of chronic pain are the rubber bands. The bands should come off this coming Thursday. I hope my orthodontist doesnt use them later again. My surgeon said he only wanted them for his use, for a month. We'll see...
I assume i get one more X-ray b/f I am done with my surgeon; but if i dont i will request he do it to double check nothing has moved. My other concern now, is that, my septum feels concave in my right nostril; and my left nostril is on the opposite side and not a lot of room left to breathe. When i lay down to sleep it seems to clog up. My concern is, i had my UPPP surgery 7,8 years ago, and my septum was shaved down. My surgeon saw the results when he consulted b/f this surgery and was happy with it. Did the application of the oxygen tube and another tube collapse or move my septum? It didnt hurt anywhere near the amount it did when i had the surgery the first time. I assume nothing happened but i dont recall such a pronounced concave septum before my upper jaw was moved. Anyway, i made my surgeon aware of this today and asked him to make a note to look at it when we meet on Thursday. He said he wold compare it to the X-rays he has from the beginning.My last concern (and i know i should probably just worry about this later) is working on keeping the majority of the weight i lost off. I have lost 25lbs so far (10 before surgery and 15 since i had it). I read the south beach diet book and my wife and i want to make changes for life to our diets. I just feel so much better now with the weight off, that i dont want to put it back on. Also, i havent had to use the BIPAP since the surgery and wouldnt want to take a step back by having to use that again.
Thanks for everyones help so far. Any other opinions are appreciated as well.