Bimaxillary Osteotomy: So Glad I Did It!!! Double Jaw Surgery to Correct Underbite, 20 Years Old

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.

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!

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.