A member of the Joint had double jaw surgery with a prominent surgeon last week.
He wrote me the next day from the outpatient facility, fresh off a 9mm maxillary advancement and 11mm on the mandible, asking if I had a recovery guide because the pain and swelling were already “pretty gnarly.”
I’m still dealing with the fallout of my dad’s passing, and so I didn’t have time to build him the “guide” he was looking for. Instead, I jotted down some quick notes based on what I think is most salient for someone going through that week 1, post-jaw surgery hell.
Here’s the advice I gave him:
1. Take your antibiotics
Many patients in this space, being drawn to holistic health, get the idea to skip antibiotics after MMA. This is not the time to play that game. Skipping antibiotics now could mean more and much harsher antibiotics later.
Keep the surgical site clean, ensure you’re being cared for, and do whatever it takes to NOT get an infection. The worst setbacks I see are infections. Don’t get an infection.
If you avoid that, you are 90% of the way to being out of the woods.
2. Keep your nose clear
Again, the worst complications I see are infections, and they often start in the nose.
Things like accidental nose blowing causing a backup, and a subsequent infection that can spread into the sinuses and even the midface.
Keep the nose clear and flushed. Do EVERYTHING the doctor says, including rinsing your nose 5x per day, if that’s his instruction.
Don’t blow your nose. If you sneeze, be sure to open your mouth and don’t stifle it. Explosive pressure in the nose is anathema.
The nose is the frontlines of jaw surgery recovery. Trouble here makes you miserable and spreads like wildfire.
3. No ChatGPT rabbit holes
Don’t go down any LLM rabbit holes about tweaking your meds, or doing auxiliary treatments like hyperbaric oxygen or lymphatic drainage too early.
Just chill.
ChatGPT can take you down neurotic, self-destructive paths around swelling and pain management.
At this stage, even the best AI models continue to be Yes Men. If you press ChatGPT enough about how miserable your swelling is making you, it will eventually budge and encourage you to take a corticosteroid like prednisone, even though that suppresses your immune system and increases your risk of a catastrophic infection.
I’ve seen this exact scenario play out with a client after his surgery.
4. This too shall pass
Right now you are going through the worst of it. Days 2-10 are peak pain and swelling.
After that, your body begins to adapt and accept the trauma, and the pain dissipates. And a week or two after that, the swelling subsides significantly.
In other words, your motto right now should be “this too shall pass.” Don’t cling to the idea that this miserable condition is somehow your new permanent state.
It’s not. It’s a phase that you’re flowing through, the way a river flows through its bed.
5. Blessed are the sick
Embrace this time. Injury can be a blessing, in that it forces spiritual contemplation and brings you closer to God.
C.S. Lewis explores this concept in his book The Problem of Pain, in which he argues that the cursed are actually the blessed, because serious suffering can force us to look beyond the mundane, to the supernatural, for an enduring source of peace. There are no atheists in foxholes.
Say a prayer for your own peace and comfort. I will say a prayer for you too.
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Let’s all take a moment to say a short prayer for this member as he goes through the hardest phase of his jaw surgery recovery.
