Anyone who has already had surgery for Eagles: Did you get First Bite Syndrome after surgery? If so did it ever go away completely? After how long? Thanks!
I had FBS for about 3 or 4 months. It began about a week after surgery and the symptoms were pretty striking at first. I now get it extremely rarely and in a much more mild form.
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I got FBS on day 5 after my first surgery. I didn’t get it after my second surgery, so it’s only one-sided. My situation is identical to what onelessstyloid noted, mine has never gone away completely, but over the last 6 years it’s become much less intense & less frequent.
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I had FBS starting a couple days after surgery with any sucking or chewing motion. By 3 weeks out it was intermittent, and now 2 months later it’s completely gone. EDIT: I say completely gone, I haven’t had symptoms in 2 weeks and that seems good enough for me but I know it could come back. My chiropractor had me doing jaw exercises when I started seeing him again and I think that helped retrain the nerve.
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It started fairly soon after my surgery, it was a bit irritating, but not super painful…it went off a bit after a few weeks, although still get it occasionally now. Cherry tomatoes last night gave me a minor twinge! It probably sounds weird, but when I get it I remember how bad I used to feel before surgery, & how lucky I am now, the odd twinge is a small price to pay!
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I had first bite syndrome the next day after surgery. I didn’t even know that was something to look out for until I tried eating and the pain was practically like an electric shock went up the left side of my face. I called my doctor and he assured me that it would go away over time. That was in 2015 and I still have it. I only got it on the left side, I didn’t get it when I had surgery on the right side. I believe that it was due to the fact that the left side surgery was more involved because it was a larger bone that they had to remove and they manipulated my salivary glands to get a better angle to take the bone out. I have learned to live with it, but red wine and lemony things are the hardest to deal with. I would say that the pain has gotten 30% less intense since the first couple years after the surgery, but I have also altered the way I eat since then so maybe it’s just that I know how to manage it better. I take a small bite of food to begin with, and chew it on the right side, then the next bite isn’t so bad. After the 3rd bite everything is fine.
I even went to Vanderbilt and saw Dr. James Netterville, who actually named first bite syndrome, and he was completely unhelpful… He even said he “didn’t know that much about it” and I explained that I read the paper that he wrote which defined the syndrome. He then acknowledged that he did name the syndrome and only offered to prescribe Elavil to help. That was not an answer for me so I have just lived with it. I would rather do anything I can to not have to take a pill every day.
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Well done tracking down the person who named the syndrome, but how bizarre that he didn’t know much about it! Glad that you’ve found a way to live with it.
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Wow! So was the trade off worth it to you? That was one thing the doctor told me, you may get rid of one symptom and then get another in its place. I hate the thought that the latter may be worse than the original issue.
I think most of us would say the trade off is definitely worth it!
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I completely agree w/ Jules. The nerve symptoms I have after 2 ES surgeries are nothing compared to the pain I had from ES.
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Thank you for asking ~ because now I know what it’s called. I had my right styloid removed last month (Sept. 25th) and have had this “first bite syndrome” immediately following the surgery and still have it to some extent now. After I was at 22 days post op I called and spoke with the nurse in my doctors office regarding the pain when opening my mouth to eat, the tissue “lump” that was in fact smaller, but annoying as anything because it feels like I have something stuck in the side/ back of my throat, and also asked if there was anything I could do to help ease that pain when I am taking my first couple of bites of food in the morning (or anytime during the day when I’ve had my mouth closed for any length of time) ~ I was advised that everything I had mentioned was in fact “normal” ~ that everyone is different and so it varies for everyone, and that it can take months (or less) for everything to completely heal … and in fact the tissue “lump” may even take the longest amount of time to fully resolve, as long as it isn’t causing me any pain I can ignore it for now.
The advice to help ease that pain upon first taking a bite of food was to say the word “ouch” and while saying it to open my mouth as wide as possible. So each day I’ve said the word Ouch and worked my mouth wider each time, I do it at least 3 times each time I do this in the hopes it will help this get resolved sooner rather than later.
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I got some FBS right pretty soon after surgery. The first 24 hours was more difficulty in opening my mouth and some jaw pain. Once I could start opening my mouth and being able to chew I had some FBS. It wasn’t as bad as some have had and in my opinion mild. It was on and off for just a few weeks and then went away. I still did have tightness in jaw when opening and soreness for several months. Im foing my 2nd side in early Dec and we will see if I get it this time around.
I got it a few days after both surgeries. Luckily, my surgeon warned me about it. You get into the habit of bracing for it when you start eating each meal. Then after several weeks I noticed that I stopped doing that and it was gone. Compared to the pain of Eagles it was a minor inconvenience to me.
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It took about 5 months for it to subside after my first surgery. Didn’t have it at all with my second.
So grateful for being Eagle’s free at last.
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Just had my first surgery intra oral on the 20th of this month. I’ve had a ton of pain in my throat, but I am so grateful I so far 10 days out do not have first bite syndrome.
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