Surgery

I sent this email to a friend, thought I'd post it here for the curious / concerned. This is happening in Boston at Mass-Gen.

I was in for the pre-op last Monday so they went over everything again. They'll knock me out, slice open my chest, take some cartilage from where the ribs meet the sternum, play God and fashion a new woman.. no, I mean fashion 2 new jaw joints (the condyles, to be exact), slice me open just in front of each ear and again under the chin on each side (4 incisions around the face), saw off the deformed condyles and stick on the new ones, tuck a bit of flap from the muscles around the joint into the socket for cushioning, and sew me all back up. They'll stick a "splint" ie a piece of plastic between my teeth to hold them apart a little bit and then fasten the teeth together so I don't move the jaw at all for the first week or so while hopefully the bone graft takes. It's a six hour operation! Takes place on Monday the 15th, first thing in the morning. I'll be in the hospital one or two nights, depending how I do.

After about a week they'll give me a little mobility so I start moving the joint and after about 6 to 8 weeks I'll have an open mouth again. Meanwhile I'll lose 5 or 10 lbs and drink a lot of broth and protein drinks and such. The ribs will grow back. Life will go on. I'll be relieved it's over.

The point of this is to give me back the centimeter or so I've lost from my lower jaw and tip it back so the teeth meet properly and I can go back to eating things like salad and nuts and such. I mean, I can eat those now but it doesn't work so well, and I can only fit little bites of everything.

They'll probably inadvertently slice some nerves in my face and I'll have numbness or muscle weakness, which will slowly abate over a year or so. As a rule it's only peripheral nerves.

The ribs will hurt a lot and I'll have to be careful to take lots of deep breaths so my lungs don't get infected.

Sometimes I get pretty freaked out about all this but I saw the surgeon and his chief resident on Monday and they're awfully nice so I felt better. And I find the hospital kind of fascinating -- such a big, self-contained organism.

I'll probably get back on my bike next summer. Maybe. No one tracks bicycle accidents so it's hard to assess the risk very exactly, but it's not negligible. But it's such a fun way to get around it'll be hard to resist.

So that's the report...