Good Evening and Welcome Back to My New Face!

It has been a looooooong time since my last post, but that is mostly because I haven't had a whole lot to say. Changes and recovery of sensation have been subtle and slow. My ortho visits are 6 weeks apart, meaning that changes to my bite/teeth are few and far between. All that said, I really wanted to do a six months out from surgery post, so here it is and, thankfully, I do have some things to report. Let's start with the positive. The sensation is 95% returned to normal in my chin. There are a few oddities, like the fact that the pins holding my new chin in place channel cold faster than the rest of my face, so I feel two little pillars of cold from the bottom of my jaw line to just below my bottom lip every time I drink something cold, eat ice cream or even breathe cold air outside. Overall though, it feels mostly normal. Also on the good side of the coin is the fact that all of the muscle tension I was experiencing is entirely gone - from my face, neck, shoulders, everywhere. I am so incredibly thankful for this because it was torturous. I plastered on a smile most of the time, but I was in agony :( I love how straight and tidy my teeth are; I love the fact that I can chew better than I could (though I don't have the strength to chew well yet, but I will address that in the next section). The not-so-good side of things is made up mostly of pain. I experience a lot of pain in the left side of my jaw. I can't yawn, chew anything tougher than el dante noodles or take a bit larger than a medium size piece of broccoli without a fair bit of pain. My jaw is pretty much constantly achy now. I am not entirely convinced that this is an improvement functionally over what I had going on prior to surgery. When I brought this up with my orthodontist, his only solution was sending me to see the surgeon again to "see if there is anything he could do." Given that I am not interested in more surgery, that didn't really make sense to me, so I didn't bother. I have also begun having migraines. They may or may not be related to the realignment of my bite, but if they are, I am not really seeing how this is an improvement over the headaches I was having. Finally, my appearance. The jury is still out. If you look only at my face from the nose down, the change is fantastic. However, the trickle-down (or up, in this case) effect of my surgery on the rest of my face has left me a little cold. Because my skin was taut over my pre-surgery face and my post-surgery face is shorter, I have a lot more wrinkles and deep lines. This has aged me significantly, which is disappointing. I think that sums it up for the most part. Here's a photo for those not on my Facebook: