Second Surgery Recovery Days 5, 6 and 7: Feeling awful in a new way

Even though this surgery seems to have much better results than my first surgery, I am feeling quite awful for the last few days. Let me try to describe this. The feeling isn't pain. It's a mix of slight nausea, pressure around the nose, another slight bit of nausea, a slight smell and yet another slight bit of nausea. But it's not necessarily vomiting, well, at least until Day 6.

This morning Day 6 I vomited for the first time since surgery day. I woke up, had an Ensure, some water and some Gatorade. At around 9am it came back up. Then as I was being driven to today's surgeon visit, I had to get out of the car and vomit again. A car service driver walked over and offered water before he saw that my fiancée had some for me. Nice guy. After I was finished we walked into the surgeon's office.

The good news is that my x-rays are still looking great. Everything is lined up as perfect as can be. I will be wired shut to ensure a perfect result until between April 30 and May 7.

As for the cause of all the nausea, the surgeon believes it is due to the strong pain medication. He referred to it as "the narcotic". Strong pain medication such as Vicodin causes nausea if you don't take it with a lot of food, though he believes that my body wasn't reacting well to almost finishing the bottle within a week. I was actually taking the doses too slowly and should have finished about two days earlier. The bottle said to take one dose every 3-4 hours, but I was spacing it out to 5-8, or sometimes going 12 hours without having any of it. Either way, it's good for all of you to keep in mind that if you are feeling a lot of nausea, it might be the pain medication. Just know that if you do stop taking your pain medication, it took about two full days for the ugly nausea effects to disappear for me.

And on the topic of pain, know that in both of my surgeries pain was really not that big of a factor. While I did experience pain at maybe a 5/10 on the day of surgery after waking up, the nurse in the recovery room was happy to give me what I needed to get that initial pain to go away. After both of my surgery days I only experienced pain at a level of no more than 3/10, usually at night.

Pain is not the big issue after having jaw surgery, at least for me it isn't. The reason why jaw surgery recovery is so difficult is mainly the discomfort, and the not being able to eat foods to keep you full.

Overall today I'm not feeling too bad, though both times vomiting were rough. This was probably the most unpleasant day since the day of my surgery, though again only because of the nausea. Everything else is going well. No wires stinging me, no problems with braces, my mouth is healing, all good.