Want me to rearrange your face?

As most of you know, Kevin had jaw surgery on December 21st. Thankfully, it went really well. We are grateful for good doctors, one of whom is even related to us! Yeah for Brian! We appreciate everyone's prayers and expressions of concern. Here are a few pictures of the event. Curt was the one who brought the camera and took most of the pictures. I was too nervous and slightly nauseous to think that was a good idea. Apparently, Kevin wasn't too anxious. He seems pretty calm in the waiting room at 5:30 in the morning.

Here he is several hours later. The surgery actually took about an hour less than the surgeon told us to expect. This meant there were no complications and all went smoothly. Yeah for Dr. Nicholls!
Kevin has an ice pack wrapped around his face. The tubes go to a cooler with ice and water that continuously cycle up to the cooling pad on his jaw. It looks more dramatic than it is. He has no outside scars; all cutting was done inside his mouth. He got to wear this head wrap the entire two days he was in the hospital and then they sent the cooler home with us. It was his best friend for a few days.

When Kevin woke up in recovery, he tried to ask the nurse about nausea. His jaw was elasticized almost shut and he was probably still a little loopy from the anesthesia. The nurse understood the word "nausea" and thought Kevin was feeling sick. The nurse's son-in-law had had the same surgery and threw up afterward. He later told her that was the worst thing that had ever, ever happened to him...EVER! With this in mind, she immediately took precautionary measures and gave Kevin a drug to knock him out so he could sleep off the sickness. Kevin later told us that he wasn't feeling sick at all. He was only inquiring about the possibility. No one thought to tell him that that wouldn't be the best question to ask in post-op!The girls are smiling because Kevin can't argue with them! He would write or use his phone to type what he wanted to tell us.

The mummy has been unwrapped and is almost ready to go home. The next picture is at the height of the swelling. This is what his face would look like if he were a burley football player.
Christmas 4 days later. Note his Christmas morning excitement. That was as much expression as we could get out of him. Rachel would hand him a present, he would open it and give a half hearted thumbs up, Rachel would take away the wrapping, and start the cycle over again on his next turn.

The first few days home were kind of rough. I felt like we brought home an old man that would sleep most of the day, shuffle around a little, and barely be convinced to eat. Thankfully, on Christmas afternoon he "woke up" and started talking more. We all were able to play games that night. From that point on, his recovery went better than I expected.
This was about 6 days after the surgery--much improvement though he still used his phone to communicate long messages.

Now Kevin has lighter elastics holding his jaw in place and he can talk pretty much as normal...dang it! :) He looks forward to eating solids in about 3 weeks. We'll see how quickly he can gain back the ten pounds he's lost. I'm guessing it will take about a week!