Surgery and the first few days post-op

Thursday, June 11th: Surgery is over! Rebecca had surgery on both sides of her jaw, removing the discs and replacing them with fat grafts. The surgery started at 12:35pm and ended at 4:54pm. Bec was in a lot of pain when she got to the recovery room, but they were able to start managing the pain very well before she arrived in her room around 6:30pm. When she got to the room, she was fully awake and excited to see me (of course, I was super excited to see her as well). She had no nausea from the anesthesia, which was great since that was one of her biggest fears. Around 8:30pm, we were finally able to get her out of bed and start walking the halls. Dr Piper expects his patients (at least the 2nd surgery of the day patients) to walk the halls 5-6 times before going to bed. Bec was able to walk every 30 minutes because she was determined to get 6 walks in before sleeping. In addition, she drank tons of fluids and had 4 ensures before bed. Throughout this process, she never got nauseous and was only a little dizzy. 

Her first selfie after surgery (that's an ice pack around her face):

Walking the halls:

We finally tried going to sleep around 11:30, only to be woken up at 11:45 by someone coming in for vitals. It seemed like they woke us up every hour through the night for something.  

Friday, June 12th: Dr. Piper's physician assistant (Jeff) came in around 7:30am to check on Rebecca. Around 9:30am, Rebecca was discharged from the hospital, and we headed straight to Dr. Piper's office for a checkup (after stopping at McDonald's for a vanilla milkshake). Bec had a CT scan to check the new discs, and then she had all her bandages removed and the incision sites cleaned. While that was happening, staff went over the medicine schedule with me and gave me a fancy printout with each day's schedule. The medicine schedule is pretty crazy - there are only a few waking hours that do not include medicine. Before leaving the office, Bec had some therapy on her neck. 

After getting back to our condo and seeing the girls, we took a quick nap. After the nap and after looking/studying her medicine schedule, we decided to go shopping to keep Bec active. We went to a huge outlet mall in Ellenton and were there close to 3 hours. Bec felt great and walked around the whole time. 

Here are a couple more selfies from Friday (the swelling around her ears increased quite a bit on Friday since we switched from ice to heating pads):

Saturday, June 13th: Rebecca is feeling great this morning. She didn't have pain meds from 12am-7am but was not in too much pain. The swelling has also increased a little more. We are planning to go into Tampa today and visit a museum of science and industry to keep active for today. 

As a note to anyone that might find this blog before surgery, the hospital provides you with syringes (with an extended catheter) to drink ensure and other fluids. Rebecca used the syringes in the hospital but found that smoothie straws (pink in the pic below) were much easier to use once she was out of the hospital.