About a week ago I had jaw surgery my second one in two years and hopefully my last. The pain is actually less than the first surgery even though this one was much more extensive. This surgery actually sucks way more though because I have to have my jaw wired shut for a TBD amount of time. Even though I am on an all-liquid diet for now they gave me the customary stainless steel wire cutters in case I start choking, though my Surgeon assured me its more for psychological comfort than anything else, although of course potentially you could be in a situation where it would save your life.
I tried googling but couldn’t find any results, Has anyone ever actually died this way where they couldn’t cut the wires in time or couldn’t find them or something like that. I would think I could find at least one or two deaths but was unable to but it seems like its had to have happened.
By the way if a spouse or friend has this done, prob not a good idea to complain that you can’t lose weight while you wolf down a juicy cheeseburger and your friend/spouse is wasting away on whole milk in syringes.
WAG: the deaths you were looking for were filed under a different Cause Of Death category, such as the original injury that led to the surgery, or complications from the surgery itself. They could also potentially be labelled as a suicide or accidental death, obscuring the cause.
Having had the experience, I would certainly welcome the psychological comfort.
After my jaws were unwired, but before I got used to the new shape of my mouth, I nearly chocked a couple of times, then did choke.
I didn’t really have the choice of sticking to a liquid diet: eventually, you have to work out how to chew, and you have to start sometime. And I can easily imagine someone stuck on a liquid diet hanging out for some hamburger
And if I had still been wired in, I certainly would have been grabbing the pliers and cutting myself out. It was a kind of panicky experience, even though I wasn’t completely blocked.
You can hold your breath for a damn long time before you become unconscious. Your lungs will be in a painful state after a minute or two, but that’s because of CO2 buildup; there’s still plenty of oxygen in there to keep you running for a while longer. That should be plenty of time to liberate your jaw.
If you’re alone, panicking, and aspirating your vomit that might not be. (Never had my own jaw wired shut, but I spent A LOT of time as a patient in a plastic surgery unit and many of my room-mates had had their jaws wired; I kept hearing that the wire cutters are if you start vomiting.)
Not a person death, but still… many years ago my mom’s friend’s dog had surgery that left it with its jaw wired shut. Apparently during the night it started to vomit and long story short choked and died in the friend’s daughter’s arms. (Good lord, I can’t imagine.)