Not being able to open your mouth wide is pretty common after surgery, I think mine lasted a week to 10 days , it usually resolves soon 
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Now 12 days post-op, quick update: Pain seems to be reducing, I took a day off from Tylenol and did fine, but developed a bad headache so I’m back on until it goes away. Still have quite a bit of swelling in my neck and cheek areas. Cheek seems to be improving faster than my neck. All the glue flaked off of my incision which made the incision look smaller and better (there was a bunch of blood caught in the glue so the incision looked kinda black and the glue was thick so the whole thing looked bigger). My symptoms haven’t improved yet, keeping my fingers crossed on that. Bottom lip still pretty paralyzed on the right side. Overall I’m functional though. Jaw pain diminished so I can eat regular food, just need to use my hand to hold my right lip away from my teeth! Follow up with Dr. Nakaji early this coming week.
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@RickAZ - Thank you for your update. Good news that your pain is reducing & you can eat more normally now. Inflammation usually takes 4-8 weeks to subside substantially & as swelling reduces, symptoms often begin to reduce/disappear - that will include your funky lower lip. Sometimes a lip droop/facial nerve takes more like 4-6 months to fully recover, but they usually do recover fully.
Please let us know how your appointment w/ Dr. Nakaji goes. I hope he’s happy with where you are in your recovery process. 
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Sorry that your ES symptoms haven’t diminished yet, hopefully soon, if you’re still quite swollen that won’t be helping… This info that @premedmom posted might be helpful once the wound has healed:
How to do Lymphatic Self-Massage on Your Face, Head and Neck
Good your pain’s reducing, praying that things improve
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Appreciate you sharing your experience an I hope you are on your way to feeling better so soon!
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Just wanted to provide a quick update. I’m just under 10 weeks post op. I could go into how I’m feeling symptom by symptom but it’s easier to just say that I’m not much better after surgery #1. Just about all of my symptoms persist.
The surgery I had was right side, but my left is the worse side (by quite a bit) so I was expecting to need both sides done so I’m not too surprised by this or too disappointed. It seemed like a very slim ray of hope that I’d suddenly get better after having the right side done.
The new symptom that I got from my surgery (lower right lip paralysis) has been improving very slowly. I have quite a bit more sensation and movement in it, eating is mostly fine now (I have trouble with taking big bites out of things, like eating a sandwhich, and I have to drink a bit more slowly to avoid having liquid pour out of my mouth, and if I smile big you can see it but if I stick to small smiles it’s not too noticable. I’d guess that I have about half of my mobility back and I feel like I get some small improvement about every week (it’s week to week improvement, not day to day). Overall I’m confident it will return to full function over the next couple of months.
I saw Dr. Nakaji at 8 weeks, and we scheduled my left side surgery for June 1st. I’m looking forward to that, hoping to be able to at least put the major surgeries behind me. He’s warned me that my left side is bad enough that its very possible that it won’t just open up from surgery, I may need a balloon dialation or something like that afterwards. But I’ve done balloon dialations before and they are nothing compared to the surgery so having the surgery behind me will be a big important step.
Sorry for not providing more updates. Truth is not much has been changing. It took about 2 weeks for me to feel pretty normal (my normal anyway) after the surgery so the recovery wasn’t too bad. After that though, symptom progress hasn’t been great. Hopefully surgery #2 will have a much bigger impact (June 1st!)
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@RickAZ - Thank you for your update. I’m sorry you didn’t get improvement that was more significant but I am glad to know your lip paralysis is recovering bit by bit.
I put your surgery date on my calendar & will be praying that the second surgery will make a huge difference in how you feel.
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I’m sorry too that you’ve not had more progress after your first surgery, but good you’re realistic about the reasons… @Sammi had facial paralysis after surgery, hers has recovered significantly, she’s posted quite a bit about this if you’re interested:
For those that have had surgery: Facial asymmetry before and after surgery? - General - Living with Eagle
I hope your second surgery gives you better results, I’ll pray too for that
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Hi, like @Jules said, I had full paralysis of the right side of my face post op and it took about 3 to 4 months before I saw significant recovery and recovery started speeding up. My lip was one of the slowest parts to recover (I am still seeing slight improvements across facial symmetry now at 8 months post op). It was very stressful and frustrating to deal with but the chances of full recovery are really high for those kind of symptoms because they tend to be related to the nerve overstimulation and/or swelling. I am 8 month post op and dealing with some of the side effects of long term nerve recovery but overall am doing well and people would never know by looking at me that any of the paralysis ever happened. I can sympathize with the food frustrations. The anxiety of eating in public and having to find foods that were easy enough to eat was the worst part for me. Good luck with your continued recovery!! I’m here if you have any questions!
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@Sammi - So great that your facial paralysis is recovering well! I hope the other remaining symptoms disappear one by one until all are gone. I had some that took more than a year to go but they finally did.
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Thank you for popping back @Sammi 
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