Today I had an appointment with Dr. L, the surgeon who completed my double jaw surgery about 6 years ago. I went into this appointment with the intent of getting more information about possibly going forward with total joint replacement, which he recommended last year. As expected, it appears to be a go.
Luckily, my control freak nature is helpful in this situation. I told Dr. L that I am good to go ahead with this second surgery, but I will need to coordinate with a lighter time at work and my time off from school. My hope is to get the surgery done in early May, and that will give me the summer to recover. I am basing my expectations on my last surgery experience. It took me about 6 weeks to get functional enough to return to school last time. So, I am expecting at least that long this time. This time around I have the added complication of talking literally being my entire job (I am a Licensed Professional Counseling in the state of Alabama). So, it'll be difficult to go back to work full time. My hope is to work my way up. I am only working part-time right now as it is, because I have just started a doctoral program in Counselor Education. So, this is helpful. I won't be taking classes over the summer, and I have put in for a summer job to supplement my income that I can do remotely. So, I'm crossing my fingers about getting the financial side of things figured out.
Here is what I know so far about the medical side of things. I'll be getting braces again very soon to correct where my bite has tried to compensate for the continued condyle resorption. Dr. K has said this will only take a couple of months; however, Dr. L wants me to go ahead and get them on ASAP, because he will need to get a CT scan in order to make the custom joint prosthesis. It takes about 2 months for the prosthesis to be made after the CT scan. So, that is 4 months of prep at best. Since I want to get the surgery in May I need to get started ASAP in order to leave some wiggle room to account for any possible issues. Curious what the prosthesis will look like?
That is the picture Dr. L supplied me with :) It only looks slightly different than the stock version. The benefit of getting a custom prosthesis is that it is guaranteed to fit with no issues. So, it will hopefully help the surgery go more smoothly. According to Dr. L, this surgery should have a slightly easiest recovery than the last surgery, because it only involves the bottom jaw. The primary issue will be the potential for nerve damage, but this is typically a temporary issue and nerves regenerate with time.
Overall, I left the appointment feeling optimistic about surgery and the potential results. I am very hopeful that this will finally be the last chapter of my jaw surgery saga. I will be trying to contact Dr. K to reschedule my braces appointment ASAP and I will update with new before pictures as well. I think it will be interesting the see how my bite has changed since the last surgery. I don't think it is very noticeable at this point, but I've avoided focusing on it until now.
As always, I hope all this information ends up being helpful for someone in a similar situation. From my experience it has been more difficult to find personal stories from people who have had a total jaw joint replacement. So, hopefully I am filling in the gap a bit by sharing my story. If you have happened across this blog in your search for information and answers feel free to contact me. I know this has been a stressful process for me. So, I'm happy to help others in any way that I can!
I'll update as soon as I have more information :)
