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.

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1739 Comments

  1. I’m ten days in on lower jaw surgery only, and getting my rubber bands remove tomorrow, what can I eat? I love fooooood, and I hate it that I cant eat what I want, I went from 95 lbs to 88. And when will they remove my splint? Thanks Graham!

  2. Thanks for sharing your experience, Richard.

    It’s a shame you didn’t have nurses that mothered you. Nurses seem to be hit or miss. Some care for you like their own child. Others act like you’re blowing everything out of proportion.

    You’re losing weight like a mad man. Isn’t it crazy how quickly our weight drops when we stop eating?

    Stay positive, man!

  3. Hi Graham, I just want express my appreciation for your very informative blog. I referred to it in the days leading up to my surgery and every day since. I’m now 6 days post-op and I’ve found that my experience has been slightly different to you and your readers’ experiences. I thought I’d highlight a few of these differences in case a reader finds it useful:

    – No eating at all on day 0. The most I could manage was 3 glasses of water, which I ended up vomiting up 12 hours after surgery due to swallowing too much blood. Absolutely disgusting, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be ie no pain etc. the weird thing was I didn’t feel like I had actually swallowed much blood.
    – I vomited again twice on day 1 even though I had nothing to vomited (except stomach bile)
    – Didn’t have any issues with drooling (and still haven’t)
    – I was totally out of it on day 0 and slept most of the day quiet easily. Since the first day the pain killers have kept me pretty drowsy so I have had no problems sleeping at all
    – My nose did bleed a lot and since day 1 I’ve been unable to breathe through my nose
    – From day 0 I’ve noticed that my left cheek, the left side of my nose and the left side of my top lip aren’t numb.
    – I never felt the need to use the suction tube at all.
    – The nurses in ICU obviously didn’t like me very much because they only gave me 1 ice pack on day 0!
    – I spent a total of 4 days in hospital (including day 0)
    – I was eating yoghurt and soup with a spoon 2 days after surgery
    – was eating chicken broth with noodles and tiny chunks of chicken 4 days after surgery (no chewing just swallowing)
    – I’ve lost 10KG already 🙁 But I don’t feel hungry
    – I’ve been brushing my teeth albeit not very well since day 1
    – Like you, the pain for me is definitely worse after the first few days when feeling starts to return. However it’s not that bad and mostly just uncomfortable/annoying

    Peace out mate 🙂 thanks for the great work!

  4. Nope, your the color of your teeth will stay the same.

  5. what am really stressing about is discolouration in the teeth. did yur teeth change colour??

  6. Life will go right back to normal, yes. The only difference is that you’ll be able to chew, breathe and speak with less effort and you’ll grow to become more confident in your smile. 🙂

  7. am having my lower jaw surgery soon, and am very scared, got my brace in yesterday and i feel awful… my teeth are not that bad, but i just want to know will life ever be the same after surgery??

  8. Libbie, I had braces for 2.5 years before surgery, but most people only need them for approximately 1 year prior to the operation.

  9. hi… how long did you hav yur brace in4? before you had ur jaw surgury… i realii realii want to know plss get back.. xxx

  10. Hi there Lindsey! That happened to me several times. You’ll wake up and feel fantastic, so you’ll spend a good portion of the day talking and moving your lips around and being all excited about life once again.

    However, all of that movement results in some major swelling because there is still a lot of scar tissue floating around, so the next day usually ends up being a day of recovery due to your verbal party from the previous day.

    It’s totally normal and you have nothing to worry about. Just remember that excessive talking is going to land you with a bit of swelling for another few weeks at least.

    Stay happy, my friend!

  11. Oh by the way, this is my 12th day of recovery!!

  12. Hey Graham!

    This morning when I woke up, my talking was so clear that I sounded like my old self again. Then I noticed that my mouth was opened wider than usual (I could get all my fingers in my mouth which I couldn’t before).

    Now my mouth is back to its original width in opening and I talk still kind of nasally due to my lips still being swollen.

    I’m thinking the swelling went down drastically during the night and somehow it came back again.

    Did your swelling ever do that? Seems like mornings are the best times of my day haha.

  13. Dustin, my teeth were still quite sensitive at that point, so it’s totally normal. They’re regain their manliness in due time, but you can expect a fair bit of sensitivity when you’re eating or drinking hot and cold things for a few weeks.

  14. Im almost reaching the six week mark into my recovery and is it normal when you drink something and when the liquid touches ur teeth.. ur teeth hurt! I think its just the nerves coming back into my teeth but man its so annoying..just wondering if you had that sorta problem.

  15. I wasn’t able to eat soft food until the 7-week mark, but it totally depends on when your splint comes out (if you have one). You’ll have to ask your surgeon.

  16. Lindsey Summers

    June 16, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    Hey Graham,

    Sorry to keep bothering you but I was wondering, when did you start eating soft food? I’m hoping to start before camp (22days) eight the soft food. Do you think I’ll be able to?

    By the way thank you so much for all your advice!:)

    Lindsey

  17. Lindsey, the splint is quite possibly the worst dental product ever built. It certainly serves its purpose well, but it’s ridiculously annoying.

    There’s not a lot you can do if it’s irritating your gums. I think the only potential fix is to somehow wedge wax around the sharp edges, but that may be difficult with all of your swelling.

    I just dealt with my sore gums and always focused on the glorious day when the splint would finally be removed. If you want to try and action the problem, ask your orthodontist for some wax (if you don’t have some already).

    Enjoy your newfound movement!

  18. Lindsey Summers

    June 16, 2011 at 10:17 am

    Graham,

    I just now got my mouth opened so I can eat through a straw!! I can’t quite suck through a straw yet because of swelling. I had a question about my splint though. It’s really sharp in the back and it’s already irritating my gums in the back of my mouth. Any suggestions on how to make it less painful?

    Lindsey

  19. Hey Lindsey! I’m totally jealous of your recovery. You must be quite the machine!

    At the rate you’re running this race, you’ll be more than okay when camp starts.

    Keep smiling!

  20. Lindsey Summers

    June 14, 2011 at 2:12 pm

    I read through this, and hopefully most of this depends on each person. I am exactly a week into recovery after my surgery and really I feel greatish. I am moving a lot more than I haave been the last few days. I don’t eat as much as I should, but I drink tons. Drooling is a annoyance now since I can’t really move my upper lip or control the swallowing. I have full feeling of my lower jaw (by the way I have both jaws moved and a genioplasty) and I can slide my teeth back forth and sideways. I get my mouth opened slightly this Thursday!! Most of my swelling is my upper lip and around the nose which is great progress I think. I can somewhat talk already. Mumbling is the most I can do, but hey better than silence. I drink some smoothies and I tried Ensure, but it builds chocolate where I can not reach so its hard to get out because I can’t swallow it.

    I am hoping to go to camp in 24 days. My doctors said I’ll be as good as new!

    Wish me luck! Thank you for your page!:)

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