Sean W Digman

I had an amazing experience with this doctor. He made me feel confident in the surgery and that he was going to do what was right for my situation. He, and the entire staff, were very experienced and I believe I got the best treatment possible!

I had been planning on doing this surgery for along time. I had braces for about 11 months prior to surgery to prepare my bite for the position my teeth are in post surgery. It has only been 2 days and I can already tell this worked out great!! Pain is not that bad at all and the swelling isn't too bad.

Updated on 17 Jul 2017:


Updated on 18 Jul 2017:
These are the two most impressive before and after pictures in my opinion. you can see how terrible my bite was prior to the surgery and then the X-ray taken post surgery (2 weeks post op) my bite lines up beautifully.

Updated on 8 Aug 2017:
My surgeon gave me the go ahead to begin chewing soft foods! It is extremely hard and just takes patients but I'm already starting to get use to it. it's going to be a while before I can start eating normal food. Rice, beans, cooked soft vegetables like zucchini are doable. It's more about learning to chew again because it's much more of a task than actually enjoyable.

Updated on 19 Aug 2017:
I'm about to be 8 weeks post op and I've been chewing for about two weeks and it's amazing how much strength I've gotten back in my jaw since then. I can open my mouth very wide now, chew more foods like pizza that isn't very tough or pretty much anything that doesn't cause me discomfort. I'm happy to say that life is truly starting to feel normal. I can sneeze and blow my nose again and it feels pretty normal! I can't wait to see how I feel in another month when I'm allowed to chew pretty much anything I want!

Updated on 25 Aug 2017:
Went to the ortho and finally started pot op ortho treatment about 8 weeks post op. Have these rubber bands in place for the next 6 weeks to perfect my bite and have "light contact" with my lower front teeth and upper front teeth!

Updated on 12 Sep 2017:
I am now 11 weeks post op and everything is returning back to normal. I am a Junior in college and school is back into full swing and it is nice that I am not laying on the couch recovering anymore! I exercise every day and energy levels are 100 percent back to normal. I have had all the feeling in my upper lip and up since about 4 weeks post op. My chin is a different story. I can feel the right half of my lower lip and that feeling has been coming back basically since I got out of surgery. The left half of my lower lip has been 100 percent completely numb since surgery, until recently. I am beginning to get very faint tingling in that part of my lip. This gives me relief because my doctor tells me the feeling could take up to 12-18 months post op to fully come back.
As far as chewing I can basically chew anything I want. However, I am still mastering biting into foods and have just begun biting into sandwiches full force. I basically force myself to attempt to eat anything as long as it doesn't hurt my jaw.

Updated on 26 Sep 2017:
Jaw Strength is returning in leaps and bounds. Since a week ago, I am cleared to attempt to eat anything I would like. This doesn't mean I CAN eat whatever I want but I continue to challenge myself every day. There will be something I had trouble chewing a week ago that I can chew completely fine now. I can chew almost anything I want but the challenge is biting. I can easily bite into sandwiches and burgers but smaller things are more difficult. The most recent thing I had trouble with and had to stop chewing was beef jerky, which is not a bad thing since that is the toughest thing I've tried to chew. I'm hoping that over the next 6-8 months I am chewing and biting full force!

Updated on 30 Jul 2018:
It has been over a year post-op and I wanted to give as much detail as I could about the entire experience!
Total cost:
Office visits: $10 x 5-6 visits ($50-$60)
Hospital stay (1 night): $500
X-ray and other imaging done: roughly $200
Cost of procedure: $0 (insurance covered it all)
Mask used to circulate cold water on face: $350 (this is optional, I thought it would be worth it and IT WAS SO WORTH IT)
Pain: (on a scale of 1-10, 10 being extremely painful)
Initially out of surgery: 2 (on drugs, numbness etc, almost no pain)
Weeks 1 and 2: I would give this a “5”, but if you ice correctly and take pain medicine it will easily goes down to a “0”.
Now: absolutely none.
Length of procedure: about 5 hours.
Initial side effects:
Right out of surgery you’re going to be in and out of sleeping and you will have a bloody nose that for about 5 days every time you stand up, but it slows as the days pass and eventually goes away. I was also not allowed to sneeze or blow my nose for 4 weeks.
I was numb from my eyes down for about 4-6 weeks but almost all feeling came back after that, the only true side effect I have from the surgery is still lasting, and probably permanent slight numbness on part of my bottom lip ( not a big deal at all).
And lastly, I wanted to talk about the screws and plates in my face after surgery.
I have 4 plates on my upper jaw, each have 4 screws. (4 plates, 16 screws). In my lower jaw I have 3 screws on each side.