17 days - some before/after photos

Still lots of swelling, readers, especially in the right cheek, upper lip, and under and around my nose. Plus that funny little sneer which kind of lifts my top right lip, fortunately also temporary. But it's already clear that my surgeon's chopped out a fair bit of my top jaw and brought my chin forward. I like it.

I have had an interesting range of reactions. Lots of people just say how swollen I am. Only couple of people have said I look quite different. One said my chin looked good, the other just said "Does that take a bit of getting used to?". And today the orthodontist's receptionist said "I wouldn't have recognised you walking down the street, I can't believe how different you look". I think that's a bit extreme. I guess she just gets used to recognising people by their mouths, perhaps it's an occupational hazard.

I just feel I look like I should - more like I used to when I was younger. After my extra jaw growth happened I used to look at photos and couldn't believe it was me. So it's a return to normal, really.

In a month or so I will be meeting up with someone who has only seen me once since I was in my early twenties. It will be interesting to see if she notices any difference - I doubt she will.

Today was good. I slept all night, and had no rests today, I felt fine. My son was home from school with a runny nose so I kind of had to keep going, but it didn't bother me.

My divine children sat quietly while the orthodontist bent over me today. Apparently after I saw him last (on Monday) my surgeon rang him and told him that the reason my jaw is over to the side is because of my jaw joint misbehaving. I surmise that after I told the surgeon how the orthodontist had made a slightly disparaging comment about the bite - that it may never be perfect - he thought a phonecall was in order to stop the man scaring me like that!

So today the clear message was that he thinks my jaw will gradually drift back over to the centre position. He put a looser arrangement of bands on me which has actually allowed it to drift more over to the SIDE which I hate, but I must have faith.

Basically he was very very nice to me and told me he was giving me preferential treatment because "you're special". Basically he got rid of all my upper surgical hooks apart from the required ones. This is a new approach, I wonder if he felt bad about worrying me.

I still don't sound that good. I think it's mainly because of the fat upper lip.

I'm off to put heat on my face and massage in my anti-flam ointment (which is kind of like Deep Heat, if you know that cream). I did it last night and it felt divine. I swear my bite got temporarily more centred afterwards, for a while.