SARPE Surgery

On April 7th, 2011 I went under the knife for my SARPE (Surgically Assisted Rapid Pallatal Expansion Surgey). My surgery was scheduled for 8:00am at a hospital which is an hour away from where I live. I was required to be at the hospital at 6am, which forced me to wake up at 4am and leave my house by 5am.
Upon arrival, they checked me in and had me great ready in the hospital gown with the drafty back flap and no other clothes. Once I was in the bed, they began to get me prepped for surgery by asking me all the questions they have already asked me 100 times, setting me up with an IV and getting any necessary vital signs. Around 7:30am the Anasthelogist (spelling?) showed up and chatting with me a bit, had me sign a few things and blah blah blah. At that same time, my Oral Surgeon showed up and started to let me know what was going to happen and that we were going to get rolling. From there, the Anastehologist’s assistant came, gave me a drug to, and i quote ‘take the edge off’ haha and from there they rolled me to the operating room.
After arriving in the operating room, the Anasthelogist shows back up, puts the little rubber mask over my face and tells me to start taking some deep breaths. I’m about 4 breaths in and I hear him say ‘Okay, this will be the last one…” and I immediately think ‘what?!? how the Eff does he know that” and then I’m out…. I guess that is why he gets paid the big bucks.
When I come to, I am in the Recovery area of the hospital with an awesome nurse paying very close attention to me. I cant feel much pain at this moment, but can feel the blood in my nose and a little bit of a scratchy/dry throat as my speech is pretty raspy. I remember having a minor nose bleed but that is pretty common and I guess it isnt unusual for it to be pretty bad. My nose never really gushed, just seemed to leak for a couple hours after surgery, which was remedied by taping a piece of gauze under my nose. I was given something called “The Jaw Bra” which is a god send. It is a perfectly made sling to hold ice packs and fits over the face.
Immediately after surgery, most discomfort (didn’t experience much of any pain) was directly under my nose and not so much in the cheek area. I stayed in the Recovery area for what I would imagine was an hour or two, until I was moved to the ICU area. My surgeon wanted me in the ICU because in his opinion, any sort of surgery that is in the area of ones airway and major arteries in the face, should be looked after closely.
My time in the ICU was pretty boring. I stayed there over night and more or less slept with ice on my face, or watched tv with ice on my face. One bit of advice that I would give would be to keep ice on your face AS MUCH as possible. I didn’t gain much swelling over the time after surgery, and in my opinion, greatly due to the fact that I had ice on my face almost constantly. Another bit of advice I might give, is attempt to anticipate when you may need pain killers. Use ice in place of a pain killer as much as possible, but if you start to feel tight, or that you are warming up or minor discomfort, don’t be affraid to ask, as I think nipping the pain in the but before it really begins to hurt will help in the long run.
So that is pretty much my experience during the day of surgery and the time in the hospital afterwards. I left the hospital at 8:30am the next day with little swelling and little discomfort. I would also advice that you keep ice on your face during the ride home. Allowing your face to heat up will create swelling and cause discomfort.