Welcome to OCF! So sorry to hear what you have been thru. You are young which should help you to recover quicker.

What you are describing is very normal with recovery from the type of surgery you went thru. Scar tissue can be quite painful. You have many nerves in the area of your surgery and the stabbing pain you described reminded me of the pain I went thru after a major surgery. Its nerve pain which hurts like heck! Ask for a prescription for gabapentin. Im not 100% sure of the spelling but this medication will help (your doc will know what it is), its for nerve pain. This was originally used to help control seizures but it works very well on nerve pain. It even comes in liquid form to make it easier to take.

As far as the scan lighting up, I hope its a false positive. That can easily happen after having a major surgery recently. Inflammation can take months to completely recede and it will light up a scan. Not only swelling but also an infection will too. You dont have a white coating in your mouth do you? If so and you can scrape it off with your fingernail then you could have thrush. That is another very painful mouth issue that is common with us OC patients.

Hang in there! It will get easier as time goes on, plus now you have us in your corner. We are here to help you with info or even to lend an ear and a kind word.