Recovery Timeline
Following is a brief timeline of important events regarding recovery from double jaw surgery. If you only had a single jaw operated on, your recovery will be much quicker than this.
Keep in mind that every person recovers at a different pace, and also that every surgeon has their own agenda during the recovery process. This is simply the sequence of important events that took place during my personal recovery.
Day 0 (Surgery)
- You’ll be eating/drinking through a syringe
- You’ll be unable to sleep very much
- You may be freezing all night long due to the ice packs wrapped around your face
- You’ll feel extremely weak
- You won’t be able to talk
- You will drool constantly (but you’ll have the suction tube in the hospital to take care of that)
- Lots of blood will be churning up inside your nose, mouth and throat
- Your jaw will randomly spasm (and it will be painful)
Day 1
- Swelling will begin
Day 3
- Swelling will peak
- Your bowels will start working again around this time
Day 5
- Feeling will begin to return to parts of your face
- Swelling will start to decrease
Day 7 (1 week)
- You’ll be able to move your mouth a bit easier, so your talking will become more understandable
- At your 1-week appointment, you’ll be able to brush your teeth, both inside and out (and it will feel amazing)
Day 10
- Drooling won’t be as rampant any longer
- You’ll regain slight control over your lips
Day 14 (2 weeks)
- Most of the swelling will be gone
- You’ll be able to start drinking from a cup (although it may be messy at first)
- You can probably remove a few of the elastics clamping your teeth together, so talking will become infinitely more simple
- Sleeping through the night should no longer be a problem
Day 15
- Your elastics will start snapping daily, due to your rapid increase in speaking
Day 18
- Your breath will become bearable again, due to the fact that you’ve been eating different foods and brushing more often
Day 21 (3 weeks)
- Your energy will start to come back. Take advantage of it! Go for walks and take your bike out for a spin.
Day 22
- You’ll be receiving substantial feeling back in your upper lip and cheeks. Your nose, lower lip and chin, however, will remain completely numb.
Day 28 (4 weeks)
- Talking will hardly be an issue any longer. If you have a splint/bite plate in, you’ll sound ridiculous, but people will be able to understand you.
- Your desire to be social and spend time with people will return in full force. Make sure you take advantage of it, and remember that your friends are not judging you.
Day 29
- Feeling will begin to return to your lower lip and chin. That feeling will come in the form of pins and needles, but you’ll appreciate it regardless. If no feeling has returned to these parts yet, don’t worry. Surgeons say that it make take up to 90 days for feeling to begin coming back.
Day 31 (1 month)
- If your elastics are off, you’ll be able to speak quite well by now
- You won’t drool or spill any longer while eating
Day 32
- You’ll have most of your normal energy back by now
- You’ll begin to feel like you’re ready to take life on again. Be warned though: you’re not quite there yet. Give it another month before you go crazy.
Day 38
- More patches of feeling will return to your chin and lower lip
- You should no longer have to wear elastics during the day
Day 42 (6 weeks)
- You should be able to drink through a straw quite easily by now
Day 45
- Most of your stitches should have dissolved by now
Day 49 (7 weeks)
- If you had a splint in, it should definitely be removed by now
- Be prepared to readjust back into the world of orthodontics
Day 56 (8 weeks)
- You should be able to eat with a small spoon or fork again
- Licking your lips should be no problem at this point
Day 58
- You’ll most likely be allowed to blow your nose again. Be gentle, though, because you don’t want to pop a blood vessel.
Day 70 (10 weeks)
- If you haven’t been able to eat solid food yet, start now. Even if the task of eating involves mashing soft food up against the roof of your mouth, do it anyway. You’ll never gain your strength back on liquid alone.
Day 84 (12 weeks)
- You should enjoy the freedom of eating just about anything you want by now
- Consider practising whistling in order to break up the scar tissue that’s sure to be keeping your upper lip from enjoying its full range of motion
Day 90 (3 months)
- Your three months have finally come to an end! Enjoy eating, breathing and smiling to their full effect.
- Changes will be fairly slow from this point forward. The results you find yourself with at the 6-month mark will most likely be the results you’ll live with for the rest of your life.
October 28, 2015 at 11:52 am
@Julia. I too have the horrible excruciating pain in my left ear. I honestly thought I had an ear infection. Come to find out it was muscle spasms. Try moist heat. That helped mine some. They do ease up eventually. I’m almost 10 weeks post op and still have them occasionally.
November 11, 2015 at 12:05 pm
What are you doing for therapy to regain getting your mouth open?
November 12, 2015 at 10:02 pm
Kim, I’m not sure how far into recovery you are, but I regained the movement in my jaw simply by talking and beginning to eat soft foods again. I found one thing that helped was whistling for a few minutes each day as well. That breaks up the scar tissue in your face, which gives your skin its elasticity back, thereby making it easier to open your mouth wide once your bone has fully healed. Hope this helps!
October 26, 2015 at 3:56 am
October 21st was my surgery, 6 long years of braces on and off before I could get it done. Double jaw surgery. Horizontal break and vertical break on top, normal side breaks on the bottom. Today is day 5, and I have to say the worst I’ve felt so far is this terrible pain in my left ear. It will come and go with my medication, but it keeps me up at night cause I can’t lay with it up, can’t lay on it, cause lay face up cause that hurts my face. Everything else has been manageable. Feeling is returning slowly, and the swelling is already going down slowly as well. First post op appointment is in a few days but if my ear doesn’t feel better, I’m going to go in to today or tomorrow. Hope everyone is getting well swiftly and comfortably ^_^ lots of love and stay strong! <3
October 25, 2015 at 1:14 pm
I recently had my surgery on the September 23rd. I’m healing quicker, I don’t have to use the elastics as much and started eating soft foods by week 4. Most of the numbness is my chin and part of tongue, little bit of my lips and a small amount of my cheeks. I was wondering if your teeth was a bit dark, kind of black on the tips. I have them on my lower teeth and I have been brushing and doing mouthwash. I was wondering if you had them while you were recovering as well.
October 24, 2015 at 12:56 pm
Hello I had my surgery on October 21 so I’m 3 days in “/ lol so today has been the best day so far. I had very tough night 2 days ago, I was nauseous and ended up puking ( not a pretty sight). So today I feel pretty Amazing compared to 2 nights. ago. I have very little bruising, talking can be done( there’s just a lot of saliva involved), and I am very swollen inside and out of my mouth.
I’m not starving yet but I’m Only on day 4 and my post op visit is on Monday.
I hope everyone is having a speedy recovery! (:
September 23, 2015 at 8:39 pm
I got my surgery done on the 3rd, it might be different from every individual but now at week 4, Im able to speak (still some letters are weird sounding), eat with a spoon, and drink without drooling and without a straw including most stuff you could do within week 8, so if anyone else comes and see this don’t worry, you might recover faster, still use this timeline as a guide, its really good and you can use it to compare your progress.
Thanks for doing this timeline and sharing your experience it has been really helpful!
September 20, 2015 at 10:51 am
I am 49 th day mark. I got little swelling. swelling is completely gone in how many days.
September 13, 2015 at 4:40 am
I had my first jaw surgery in November 2014, using this recovery timeline definitely helped, although it was slightly different, you knew what to expect. I followed my doctors advise all the time and never fully recovered felling in my bottom lip and left side of my chin, however my jaw bone grew back incorrectly leaving me with an open bite. In March 2015, went back in for my secon jaw surgery and my mouth was wired shut for 6 weeks, the recovery went a lot faster than the first, again by jaw decided to do its own thing and broke the plates, leaving me again with an open bite and bone in my cheecks. Now on September 9th 2015, I went in for the 3rd Suregry. This time surgery was done externally, reconstructive mandible bilateral. So reconstructive plates where used as well as pigs bone, but this is to prevent the jaw from growing back incorrectly. This is by far the most painful surgery I have had, as it leaves you with constant ear ache and headaches. Now day 5 I can feel the extra aches starting to subside and the swelling is going down. I have been allowed to eat soft foods from the first day, but sticking to liquids is so much easier. I seriously don’t want to have a 4th surgery and it feels great to have a closed bite and all my teeth touching. So good luck to all of you out there who had to go thorough surgery and are still having to go through surgery.
September 7, 2015 at 9:53 am
To Toni, I had my double jaw surgery (lefort 3) with genioplasty on 8/13/15 and am still experiencing the sensitivity to cold. I used to love ice water but I have been drinking all fluids room temp. My surgeon said this was normal.
September 4, 2015 at 10:24 pm
I’m 2 weeks post op and I was wondering if anyone else experienced sensitivity to cold? I cannot drink anything cold or it sends the roof of my mouth in spasms.
August 24, 2015 at 7:56 am
Hey everyone! I want to mention that this is a great timeline for the first few weeks, but it is nothing like my experience after about week 3. I had my double jaw surgery (for underbite) on July 8th, 2015. I was out and about within a few days of my surgery. Granted, I didn’t feel great, but I knew walking and treating myself well (pedicure/manicure!) would make me get back to feeling better sooner.
I am a very texture-conscious person, so I was only able to eat ensure for about a week and a half (I can’t stand smoothies). As a result, I was losing weight. Despite the fact that the doctor said this was normal, I didn’t want to lose weight. My way of alleviating this was to swallow coin sized pieces of hot dog whole (no chewing allowed!) so I could get more protein without gagging from eating mashed up meat.
My doctor hasn’t really given me any instructions for recovery, so as soon as I got my splint out at 3.5 weeks, I started slowly eating solid food as it felt okay. If something was uncomfortable, I listened to my body and discontinued any chewing.
The best things I found to start out chewing were ground beef, soft pasta, etc. I am eating fairly normally now (almost 7 weeks post-op) and have regained all lost weight. Woo! I have all my feeling back in my face with the exception of a pins-and-needles area on my chin. It is not really bothersome at all.
NOTE: I did not have any feeling from my nose to my eye socket on the left side of my face until week 4. It was so nice when that came back!
My best advice for anyone going through this surgery: Take your pain medicine, get up and moving around, and listen to your own body rather than rigidly adhering to someone else’s timeline (it’s great as a marker, but nobody has the exact same recovery!). Of course, listen to your doctor, but also talk with him/her about your nutritional needs. Remember that without eating you WILL NOT HEAL. The only reason I have healed so quickly is because I didn’t live on liquid alone for very long.
January 31, 2017 at 6:01 am
I’m currently on day 6 post op! And all I’ve drank is the ensure drinks too.. really struggling and starting to get worried as it’s nearly a stone and a half that I’ve lost now in so little time! But I’m the same as you, weird with different textures in my mouth etc… I’m scared I’m gonna not be able to drink nothing but ensure for a good 2 more weeks, what do I do? Thanks x
August 21, 2015 at 10:19 pm
Looks like I’m recovering significantly slower than some of you! I was VERY thin before surgery so this took so much out of me. I am 6 weeks post op, no feeling in my lower lip/chin/lower cheek/nose area. The only feeling I have back so far is my upper cheek and my left side of my top lip. I’m still struggling with daily life, showering still takes most of my energy. I have been up and about but after about an hour of house cleaning/ walking I am done for the day. Just thought r might be good to hear others perspectives and what they are going through! .
August 21, 2015 at 7:46 am
How long until many people can return to work?
August 11, 2015 at 10:09 am
I’m 22 days post op and everything is going great. Still wearing my elastics and I do have a crazy lisp at this point but my energy levels are normal and most of my feeling has returned. Apart from my lower lip and chin. I’m eating soft foods that require minimal chewing if they need chewing at all. I’m reluctant to try chewing too much at the minute and the only thing bothering me is the lack of movement in my jaw at the minute. Can easily fit one finger between my teeth but not 2 fingers as yet. All in all I’m happy 😀
August 3, 2015 at 3:01 pm
I’m 12 days in and it looks like I’m doing a little better than you were at this point. I had both jaws done including a 3-part osteotomy on the upper jaw. The surgeon I went to is apparently very skilled and was able to do a different procedure on the lower jaw (don’t know what it’s called – I’ll have to ask) and I had complete feeling in my lower lip/chin hours after I woke up from surgery. My cheeks under the eyes and upper lips are still numb, but the feeling is definitely returning. Swelling is slowly going down.
I’ve been able to get by food-wise by making homemade soups and blending them with an immersion blender. I’ve been able to eat chicken, beef, and even veal in pureed form. Like I mentioned above, I have complete feeling in my lower lip, so I’ve been able to drink from a glass/bottle since a week after surgery.
Since I had such extensive work done on the upper jaw, my splint is larger than normal – which makes speaking very very difficult lol. My surgeon said the splint will stay in until the 4-week mark, and the wires come out at 6 weeks.
Pain is almost non-existant at this point, but I’m still taking a small amount of hydrocodone at night to get to sleep. I also take a little sudafed to make sure I can breathe through my nose the entire night.
The absolute worst part of surgery was that catheter. Oh my god. When they pulled it out… I don’t even want to remember that feeling lol. I was also in the ICU for two days which was super annoying. Nurses chatting near my bed at 3:30 AM…
I’m really pleased with the results so far, it has far exceeded my expectations and would recommend it to everyone who needs it – it seems like it’ll be well worth the inconvenience right now
July 29, 2015 at 12:32 pm
Kirsty!
I’m 4.5 weeks post-op. You’ll be able to talk but you’ll have a sweet lisp and any words that require you to close your lips will be a struggle. I’m a gym freak as well. The Dr. wanted me to wait 6 weeks! I’ve been back in there since my 2 week mark. I was taking it easy at first but now I feel good enough to give it a 100%. There was no way I could go that long without lifting. Lol. Just stay away from high impact/quick movement type exercises and you’ll be fine.
July 28, 2015 at 7:16 am
Hi 🙂
I am having double jaw surgery on August 19th. I am a student teacher and have a practical on Sep 7th. Will I be able to talk at all? It is mostly observation. Another thing- how long after the surgery will I be able to exercise? I’m a gym fanatic
July 24, 2015 at 8:45 pm
I am having surgery on August 12th and i am nervous as heck. How long does the surgery usually take?? What should I expect right after the surgery is over? Thanks.
July 16, 2015 at 12:45 pm
I’m six weeks out from my surgery which was in early June – double jaw for underbite and a widening of the upper jaw as well – the trifecta of jaw surgeries. I found this blog before my surgery and checked in periodically during recovery and it’s been reassuring and kind of funny how close my own experiences are reflected here.
I will say the surgery was at once not as bad, and much worse, than I had expected. Not as bad the first few weeks post-op, and much worse going forward. It sucks having your jaw wired shut, but adjusting during those first few weeks was much easier than I thought it would be. There is some frustration and trial and error as far as eating and such (my advice would be to get your blender and some recipe ideas ahead of time and practice to see what works), but for the most part you are so broken from the surgery and pain meds those little frustrations aren’t such a big deal. The pain isn’t too bad and the discomfort neither, since you’re so numb and have NO facial mobility. The first week is over fast and then you get banded and eating/talking becomes much easier. Weeks 2 and 3 things are improving rapidly and you feel really good about everything, and that’s when things are better than expected IMO. I had thought it would be 2-3 weeks of misery.
Then around week 4 and onwards the recovery process slows. This is when things got worse than expected. I figured I’d be pretty much good as new by then. No. The splint is a constant hindrance to oral care, eating, speaking, drinking, etc. Swelling has already reduced substantially so you don’t notice day to day changes anymore. Feeling isn’t coming back to your face and lips as quickly as you thought. And when 6 weeks rolls around and the splint comes out, the surgeon finally gives you the go ahead to eat. Oh, how excited I was about that – I had been fantasizing about my first meal. Only to quickly realize with my first bite that eating is freakin hard!
I had an open bite on half my mouth, and the side of the mouth where teeth touched was still pretty much completely numb. Not to mention weakness to an extent that biting into a noodle was a struggle. Between figuring out the mechanics of eating with my new jaw, trying to move food around without being able to feel it, and the weakness, I left unsatisfied and with tons of food unknowingly still stuck in the back pockets of my mouth clamoring for some more soup/ensure. How disappointing to learn after all this time and anticipation, I actually preferred the 250th+ Ensure and some more blended soup varieties when I got home.
And now, after the splint was removed they really struggled with getting the impression for my appliance and had to make FIVE attempts to get it right. Much pain was involved, and a really bad sore/infection has now developed in the right corner of my lips making it very uncomfortable to open my mouth. Fortunately it’s on the numb side, I guess!
They make the recovery sound hardest the first few weeks, but really it’s the backend that’s a struggle. There is a sense of relief those first few weeks. You’ve finally done it, you have nothing to worry about but your recovery, and (hopefully) lots of people are supporting you. After a month and going forward, when things are still shaky and you wonder if they’ll ever get better, you start going back to work underweight and undernourished, and you just want to be better. That’s when things are really hard IMO. I don’t regret any of it, but it would be helpful I think to know at the outset that it would be much longer than six weeks for things to return to normalcy.
November 12, 2015 at 1:58 pm
I had the same surgery you did, Nick! Widening of the upper jaw and moving the bottom jaw forward to fix my overbite. Surgery was on September 23, 2015. I just got cleared last Thursday to chew soft/mushy foods like pasta and such. Today I’m cleared to start expanding my diet (7 weeks post op) to more texturizing foods throughout the next week like chicken and beef. Next Thursday the 19th, I start my jaw therapy/exercises. But I’m having a lot of trouble chewing now. I don’t have the range of motion like before so when I chew, my jaws just open and close on the food. I hate it because of the food that’ll get stuck in the back of my mouth and between my brackets and before I could stick my tongue back there and push it out but I can’t now! Does it eventually get easier?
November 12, 2015 at 11:54 pm
Nick, I really appreciate your insight. I suppose it’s easy to encourage people by assuring them life gets better after the first couple of weeks, but you make a good point in calling out the worry and frustration that sets in when you’re still not back to normal after a few months. I’m working on a recovery manual PDF right now, so I’ll include some thoughts about this dilemma in there.
Devon, for what it’s worth, I remember being super frustrated when I was first given the green light to eat soft food again as well. I thought it’d be an easy transition, but found that I barely had any strength in my jaw. I had to use a toothpick to dislodge food from my braces and appliance for about two weeks before I was able to maneuver my tongue enough to actually clean my mouth. As your scar tissue decreases and your range of motion increases, you’ll slowly regain the same movement you had before the surgery. For now, patience is still the key.
July 15, 2015 at 7:00 pm
I am 5 days post op upper and lower jaw surgery along with TMJ disk repositioning. I was initially in an incredible amount of pain. Thankfully my surgeon gave me heavy duty pain killers. Most of my pain is gone and I’ve been able to drive and shop for myself. I definitely have a lot of swelling. When my parents first saw me after surgery they both started crying. I couldn’t recognize when I first looked in the mirror. I’ve had quite a few strange looks from strangers when I was out. My doctors told me I could start eating soft foods like eggs, pasta, rice, mashed potatoes, and anything I could purre in a food processor.I have a continuous bloody post nasal drip and drooling. My biggest complaint right now is an intense cold sensation across my sinuses, nose, and in my front teeth. I like having a cold headache in my nose. It’s much worse than any post op pain I’ve delt with. I can’t stand sitting in an air conditioned room. The cold air makes everything worse. It’s awful because it the middle of July and I live in Texas. Has anyone else experienced something similar? I talked with my doctor but he dismissed me saying it’s too soon to be feeling the nerves waking up.
July 9, 2015 at 9:54 am
My hat goes off to all of you guys that were brave and got this surgery done! I am looking to have surgery done for an underbit I have and I’m not going to lie, reading some of these is scaring the s*** out of me! Lol. I am 27yrs old and I am worried if I get the surgery done how long will I be out of work? I work at a bank as a banker and need to be able to speak to my customers.