One month already??

Okay so I have to admit even though it has seemed like time has been especially slow ever since my surgery, I am surprised that I actually have made it a month without solid food!! I realized yesterday that technically I could call myself a vegetarian since I haven't consumed any meat whatsoever during this month...but why would I want to do that?! I can't wait to have a cheeseburger again! I just have to make it FOUR more days. I feel like that is really about the limit of what I can endure. I feel like it will be one of the greatest moments of my life to get that splint out. My mouth currently just looks like a mess of plastic, metal and of course wax all over the place. I have 2 hooks on almost every one of my front top teeth, one being the surgical hooks that each tooth got before surgery and another one from the splint since it is sort of tied into my braces. Ugh they drive me crazy. If it weren't for the food issue though I have to say that I honestly wouldn't have anything to legitimately complain about at this point though. I usually feel bad in the morning from the rubber bands I have to wear at night, but everything is bearable and during the day I don't have that problem. I would feel really back to normal if I could eat. So I feel like Wednesday will mark the point where I am not really recovering anymore, and I will forget all about the torture of these last few weeks. No meat for a month?! Man, I am a stronger person that I thought I have to say...

I've gotten the house a lot more organized and now I'm focusing my energy on getting it decorated and looking good for when we have guests on the fourth of July weekend. =D Now I am going to go load our new dishwasher, which is something I normally hate, but I am curious to see how quiet it truly is since it makes some pretty hefty claims in that regard...

2 weeks to go...

I had a follow up appointment with the surgeon today and he is still very pleased with my recovery and with the way everything looks. My swelling has gone down significantly, but with that splint in my mouth and the inability to make facial expressions, I still can't really tell how different things are yet. It is really awkward at work when you can't smile, because there are so many times when I briefly pass by someone I know and the proper thing to do would be to give a little smile and say 'hello, how are you' in passing but I can't actually form a smile so I'm afraid I am coming off as rude...Especially to people who don't know me well enough to know that I had surgery. Ah well, I'm not really that concerned about it.

The Dr. said my splint will come out in two weeks, and once it is out then my diet can progress to the next stage. Which in my head equals Raising Cane's french fries covered in Cane's sauce! Also, I do not need to wear any rubber bands during the day, just at night now. I was hoping he would take the splint out next week, but I will just have to be a little more patient. He told me that I have to go straight from his office to the ortho after he takes it out, because my ortho will need to do some stuff to my braces/mouth to ensure that my jaw doesn't collapse...his exact words, I'm not kidding! I'm sure it's not really that dramatic, but without the support of the splint my jaw can just have a field day and decide to go back to it's former state I guess. So that will be the downside because I am sure whatever happens that day at the ortho, I will look back and say that it was the most painful visit I ever had...Just a guess though!

The last bit of news is that I GAINED two pounds since my last check up! I have a super hard time gaining weight when I can eat whatever I want, so I am really happy to know that the routine I've got going with the liquids must be enough to keep me from wasting away. Of course, I only managed to gain back about half of what I lost in the first week, so I still need to gain more to get back to normal but it's a start. I figured the best case scenario would be to just not lose anymore while I was on liquids, so I am hopeful that I can gain more even while I have the splint in still...I really need to because I bought some pants at the Gap today that I know would fit perfectly at my normal weight, but right now they are a little loose in a few spots =(. They will serve as part of my motivation to pack on more pounds.

Last thing I will say doesn't involve my surgery, just my life in general...yesterday Franklin had a little adventure, and I'm still not quite over the whole thing. Basically, our fence has a few areas where the boards don't touch the grass, and there is enough of a gap that Franklin can squeeze under and escape. He had only done this once, when there was a rabbit in the yard that went under the fence and he wanted to chase it. I had to run next door and go get him which lead me to the decision that he would never be left alone in the yard...EVER. But then, Adam & I bought some wood beams and laid them on the grass to cover up all of the gaps the other day, and we thought, awesome now Franklin can play outside without us watching him. So Adam put him out in the yard, called me while I was driving home and said, hey Franklin is gonna be out in the yard when you get home. Immediately I started imagining all of the worst case scenario's if he was somehow able to escape and I was really anxious to get home...And by the way, Adam and I have a sort of joke whenever we leave Franklin somewhere outside of our own house (i.e. his parent's house, or my sister's apt, etc...) where when we are driving back we jokingly say 'wow, what's Franklin doing over there' as if he had escaped and was roaming around. It's not really funny, and when I pulled into our driveway lo and behold there is Franklin walking around the front yard! Meaning, he had escaped the back yard and was just wandering around the neighborhood unbeknownst to Adam! Luckily he didn't notice my car until I was almost at a complete stop in the driveway because once he DID see it, he came running towards it and I don't think he would have stopped even if it was moving! It was just so scary to me to see him all alone, walking around in a place he still isn't very familiar with (considering we haven't even lived here a full month yet and he never really is in the front yard). Once I was out of the car he came running towards me and I brought him inside where I proceeded to tell Adam how I found him, and of course I made Adam swear never ever ever to leave him alone in the yard ever ever again. When I went out and inspected the yard, Franklin had knocked over one of the wooden beams leaving a nice sized hole for him to crawl under the side gate. Bleh. I know he is an animal and not a person, but he loves us unconditionally and relies on us to take care of him so it just really made me sad to think of what could have happened and how lucky we were that he was smart enough to stick around the front of the house and not wander off or into the street. I don't know what I would do without the little guy! Anyway, that was a really long and detailed account of what happened so I will just end with that and in the meantime, I will be counting down the days until I can get this splint out of my mouth and replace it with some french fries!

Pictures

FYI, I have taken photos from various stages of recovery, but I am too lazy to post them right now since I don't know where the cord that connects my camera to the computer was packed...They will show up eventually!

2 and 1/2 Weeks Down!

This coming Tuesday will officially be 3 weeks since the surgery and I'm so excited! I go back to the dr on Wednesday and hopefully he will let me know when he is going to take out the splint in my upper jaw...He said it can be anywhere from 4-6 weeks, and you can't move to soft foods until the splint is out. I am really hoping that I am a 4 week candidate and not a 6 week one, but I won't know that until the dr tells me! So I have still been on liquids, which is not awesome but I am dealing with it. Basically, it's really overwhelming when I look at the whole timeframe that I might still have left, but when I just take it day by day it doesn't seem so bad. All I have to do is make sure I eat enough each day, and then deal with the next day when it comes. I have been trying to stay stocked up on all of the things I've found that I like so that I have some choices when I am hungry. I have a ton of gogurt flavors, Starbucks frappucino's, chocolate Ensure, pudding, applesauce, ice cream and mashed potatoes. Between those options I have somehow managed to get in my needed calorie intake every day so that I haven't continued to lose weight. I don't know if I have been able to recovery some of the weight I lost the first week, but I will settle for now for at least not wasting away. Speaking of which, I am hungry so I will go find something to eat/drink and will update more once I've seen the dr again!

I survived!

Well, I think I have made it through the worst part of my surgery experience and I'm only slightly miserable at the moment. I will rewind what has happened in the last week since I was very horrible about posting any information...

The morning of surgery, we overslept. I was supposed to be at the hospital at 6, and it takes about 45 minutes to drive over there...so when I woke up at 5:30 I FLIPPED OUT. I immediately starting screaming, omg omg omg and running around like crazy. My mom and I got ready very quickly, it wasn't too hard for me since I couldn't wear my contacts, eat anything, wear make up or worry about what to wear. I just had to shower quickly, and throw an overnight bag together and we were out the door with Adam following behind in his car. At least that is what I thought. Adam actually took a little while to get ready so the whole time I was speeding to the hospital (and I do mean SPEEDING) I was also nervous that I wouldn't even see Adam before they took me back...I also called the hospital on the way there to warn them, and they were pretty nice about it and just told me to be careful driving. So we got there, and I had to change into a hospital gown, get into a bed and get my IV inserted. I started FREAKING out at this point, thinking that I may have made a huge mistake and maybe I should just leave before it is too late. But they do everything so slyly so as to not make you really 'know' when you are ready, so I didn't really realize when I was getting the first dose of anesthesia. The last thing I remember is the anesthesiologist putting a shot into my IV and me closing my eyes. I didn't even say bye to Adam or my mom before I was OUT. The next thing I remember is blinking my eyes open and seeing blurry images of Adam and my mom and knowing that it was over and I was still alive (which was a pretty nice feeling)...

I stayed at the hospital until about 6pm the next day. My dr was going to come check on me but some things came up at his office so he called the nurses and told them to let me go home, and that I could just come in to his office the next day for the check up part. I really didn't want to leave the hospital, I was pretty comfortable and feeling good because the nurses were taking such good care of me, and all I had to worry about was getting up to go to the bathroom. I do have to say though, the evening of the surgery, I threw up almost every hour until 4am the next morning. I think it was the blood I had swallowed that was making me so sick. Even anti nausea meds weren't really doing much to stop me from feeling super nauseous. It was really bad when I would get up to go to the bathroom too =(. But eventually it just went away and from that point on I was fine in that department. My nose would start bleeding every once in awhile which was also gross and that didn't stop for quite a few days after the surgery...

Even though my mouth wasn't wired shut, it was rubber banded shut, very tightly and I had a bandage wrapped all around my head. So the worst pain I felt was in my jaw muscles because it felt like my jaws were clenched SO tightly together. I couldn't really breathe through my mouth, and I had to use syringes with little hoses to get my medicine in, but I got the hang of it and it wasn't so bad. I was really dreading having the splint on my upper jaw (which is kind of like a mouthguard, but has a strip that goes across the roof of your mouth too) but that didn't really bother me, luckily.

Coming home was really hard, since I now had to keep up with medicine and eating and all that without the help of the nurses, but my mom helped me keep track of all of that. I really dislike having to take all of the medications in liquid form, something I just hadn't thought of, because it made my mouth taste so bad and sort of ruined my appetite. My face was super swollen, and felt like I was carrying around a brick. I pretty much took my pain meds as often as possible because as I got the feeling back in parts of my lower face, I would start to feel new pain.

Tomorrow marks a full week since the surgery so I am really happy to have one week over with! Hopefully it will get easier from here, because I am getting really antsy to be back to normal. I tried to be as mentally prepared as possible for how hard the recovery would be, but I didn't realize I would feel so sick. I pretty much feel like I did when I had the flu, taking a ton of medicine, not very hungry even though I know I would feel better if I ate, being really tired and run down. Bleh, I don't know why I wasn't anticipating that, but it never occurred to me. When Adam had his shoulder surgery, he seemed mainly like his normal self, except for needing meds and not being able to do stuff with his arm...Anyway, today I have not taken a single dose of pain meds since 1am! That is by FAR the longest I've gone so far without them, and I'm not trying to be a saint, I just really don't hurt. My face is really tingly, like that feeling when you've had an area numbed at the dentist and you are getting the feeling back. The worst thing is that I am still so so so tired and sometimes get dizzy just standing up, like even that is too difficult of a task AND the lack of appetite that I have. The first few days I was really creative and drinking blended up soups and beans/cheese concontions, but then I reached a point where the thought of drinking beans or anything 'warm' made me want to throw up. But I am also pretty tired of chocolate shakes as well...I go back to the dr on Wednesday, and I am HOPING with all of my heart that the dr will let me go to soft foods. That would open up the world of pasta, mashed potatoes, pancakes, really mushy cereal and even mushy casseroles! But for now I have sent Adam to the grocery store to get some Ensure shakes, and some Spaghetti-O's (I am hoping that I can drink those, since the noodles are really small...we will see when he gets home with them...).

My swelling has gone down quite a bit, but it's still too soon to see what the result will be. The stitches in my mouth made it hard to really smile or anything at this point, so I am just waiting to get to a point where I can get a better idea of what my new face will look like...it's really hard to be patient though! Every day I wake up and look in the mirror to see if the swelling has gone down. It's definetly better, but that isn't saying much since I looked like I had swallowed a football when I got out of surgery. Oh well, the WORST is behind me! The next few weeks will pass somehow or another, and then I will probably be counting down the months until I get my braces off! That will really be the next milestone to look forward to and that is pretty unbelievable! Overall, for anyone who is reading this in preparation of having surgery, or thinking about doing the surgery...Bottom line is that I would do it again every time. Because the discomfort I have now is so minor compared to the years of not being able to breathe or chew correctly. I do hate that I feel 'sick' but if that is the worst of it, feeling like I have the flu, that really isn't SO bad considering that type of procedure. You just have to be prepared to be really patient, and know that you will have to remind yourself each day that you are one day closer to putting it all behind you! When you've had it hanging over your head for so long, it's nice to know that every day is a day that you don't have to do over again and one less day in the whole process!

ONE WEEK!

This time next week my surgery will be OVER! I will probably be laying in the hospital bed feeling really good (some from relief but mainly from the meds I'll be on). Of course I am counting on the hardest part of the whole process being the recovery, so I really won't be out of the woods for awhile after the actual procedure is over, but it would be nice to at least get that part over with. I wonder how soon I will be able to get an idea of how the finished result will look...probably a few weeks. It's hard to imagine a time when I won't have all of this stuff hanging over me but I bet it will go pretty quickly from here.

The fact that I've been able to focus a lot of stress on the house situation has really helped keep me from freaking out too much about the surgery. We are supposed to close on the house tomorrow but the loan company needs Adam's employer to submit the employment verification form before they can finalize the loan paperwork. I hope his company realizes how important it is for them to fill that out quickly...I try to remind myself that I should let it go and not worry about it, but there is a really short time frame for us to close, move and be situated before my surgery so I have this knot in my stomach that won't go away. During my sister's wedding it loosened up quite a bit while we dancing to Ice Ice Baby and the YMCA, but only to tighten back up once I was back at work Monday. Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I will have a better picture on what is going to happen with the house so I can stop thinking about it.

I do have to say that as much as I stressed about Shelly's wedding going perfectly, it really did in the end I think. It was a lot of hard work, but I had a lot of fun at the reception dancing and mingling, and of course eating delicious wedding cake. It's a good thing I didn't do the surgery right before her wedding or I wouldn't have enjoyed myself half as much.

I have all of my final pre surgery appointments Thursday: Ortho at 9:30, then the surgeon at 11 and finally the hospital at 12:30. The ortho is putting on my surgical hooks, which should be a fun experience (sarcastic) and then the surgeon is going to go over all of the instructions for before and after the surgery, and do a physical...The hospital is just doing some routine bloodwork. I got to go back to the surgeon today because the upper impressions they did were a little messed up so they needed better ones. For some reason it has been hurting really badly when they are pulling the mold out, and I think it's from when Franklin actually knocked my teeth together =(.

So I think I'm in the home stretch! Just a little more to go...

Just waiting...

Well there is nothing new really regarding my surgery, but I figured I'd go ahead and write about what I have coming up...First of all, besides just dealing with the stress of having the surgery (preparing to leave work for a few weeks, planning my post surgery diet, etc) we are in the process of buying our first home. It's not the same house I talked about in the last post...we lost that one because they went with the other buyers (although my realtor said the deal later fell through and the seller's realtor came crawling back to see if we were still interested). However, the house that we have a contract on is one I found shortly after losing out on the other one...it's a foreclosure so we are getting it at an AMAZING price and it only had one owner and he took really good care of the house. I am trying to remind myself that something could still go wrong, mainly because we were pre approved but we still have to get the loan actually approved now...if the loan is approved, then I will get really excited!

I already started packing up our apartment because we won't have much time to move into the house before my surgery date. So far I've already gotten quite a bit ready to go. Since we close on a Wednesday, the plan is to start moving anything that will fit in our cars in the evenings after work until the weekend, also trying to sort of organize and unpack each load as we go...then on Saturday night we will get a UHaul and enlist some help to move all the big stuff, and whatever small stuff is left. This will leave me 2 full days to get the house in livable condition...which would be hard, except my mom flies in from Houston on Saturday so she will be able to help!

In regards to the surgery, I have an appointment this coming Monday with my surgeon. They will take new molds and xrays and discuss all the instructions for the surgery and aftercare. I am super excited because I have a lot of questions! After this appointment, I don't think I'll see the surgeon again until the day of surgery!! I have to have blood work and a physical done before the surgery, but I think that is going to be done at the hospital, so I don't think he will be involved. Very exciting to think that I'll only see him once more before surgery! I only have one ortho appointment before the big day, and that is to get hooks on...which I will have throughout moving weekend...yay...

That's all the big news for now...Just excited that things are SOO close to happening now, the wedding will be here in just over a week (which I can barely comprehend) and I just think the time is going to fly by...If you are reading this Jae, congrats again to you and Aaron for your first home purchase as well! What are the odds we would be going through this at the exact same time!?

A new jaw and a new house?

I have so many big things going on right now, it's hard to feel too much stress about any one given thing. The big list is: my surgery, trying to buy a house, Shelly's upcoming wedding and then Adam's birthday weekend. Of course the wedding and Adam's birthday aren't super stressful things to think about, but they do require some planning...We put an offer in on a home that we LOVE. It's got a wonderful back yard that is pretty much the largest we can expect in the area we are planning to move to and a spacious back covered porch. Adam and I are both looking so forward to spending a lot of time outdoors with the puppy (near future, hopefully puppies plural). We will want everyone to come visit us and will probably be eating a lot more BBQ!

They countered our offer pretty quickly and the request they came back with was kind of crazy so we met them half way. Adam and I are still anxiously waiting to hear something back about our counter offer back to them, and this is where I have to really try to relax and trust that things will work out for the best. It's hard to imagine finding another home that we would like as much as this one, but the reality of it is that their are a lot of other houses if this one doesn't work out.

I had an adjustment at the ortho today, probably the last one before my surgery. I have to go back for a visit the Thurs before surgery so they can do some molds and put the surgical hooks on each bracket. Some of my brackets already have a little hook built onto them for rubber bands but most don't, so they have to make hooks on all of them before surgery so that I can use rubber bands on every tooth afterwards. I am guessing from everything I've read that they will be a pain to deal with for the days in between getting them on and then going into surgery. Oh well, at least I got the OK from Dr. G regarding my surgery date. I figured if the surgeon said I was ready then that was good enough, but I was still a little nervous about what Dr. G would say. The assistant said that Dr. G bent my top wire a certain way to where it pulled one of my front teeth down too low and so they had to push it back up again =( That tooth really didn't want to go into the wire so it was pretty painful at the appointment, but thankfully my teeth aren't really sore at all right now. Each adjustment had started hurting less and less but the one before this one, my teeth were REALLY sore so it kind of threw me off. I guess in hindsight it's because they were pulling one of my teeth down...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the house and now it's probably time to file my taxes...I know I know, I waited until the last minute, but I did this on purpose because of the home buyers tax credit...I am just submitting an extension to give us more time to secure a house and get the credit =D.

The good news!

After months of battling with my insurance company, while my surgeon's office only helped by intermittently offering encouragement to not give up (the other half of the time they were trying to convince me to do the surgery night finish fighting with the insurance later...) I switched to an in network surgeon who had a dedicated worker whose only job was to get my surgery approved. I started trying to get this approved back in August of 08 to no avail, and then once my new surgeon's office submitted the info, I received approval in 2 days. 2 DAYS! So I now have an official surgery date to look forward to: May 26th. Just a little over a month away, and I'm so excited.

Although I sort of went into shock after I got the good news (surgery finally approved) because instead of thinking solely of my distaste for insurance companies now I had no choice put to focus on the actual surgery actually happening. So I felt a little scared, and sort of like, wait why am I doing all of this again? But that stage didn't last for very long, I gave that decision a lot of thought long ago and I decided to do this so I am not backing out now! I just now that everything is going to go by so quickly...I have an adjustment at the ortho on Wednesday where I will get to tell Dr. G the great news! And then on May 11th, I have an appointment with the surgeon for sort of a pre surgery information session, well info for me and updated models for him to practice the surgery with...I will have to have an appointment set up to get the surgical hooks put on at the ortho and then before I know it, the big day will be here! Since the day before is Memorial Day and both my mom and I will be off of work, she will fly in the weekend before and we will get to have some fun time before I am essentially an invalid and all of her time is spent trying to find creative ways to satiate my hunger for food while only have a very tiny opening in my mouth in which to eat any. We are also going out of town in a few weekends for Adam's birthday so that will also help the weeks fly by!

I have had this surgery as a source of worry and stress for over a year now, and I am so excited to get it over with! My biggest concern is all of the weight I will lose in the weeks after the surgery by not being able to eat normally, but hopefully adding protein powder to pretty much everything will help and Adam will hopefully have some other ideas in that area as well to keep me healthy and the weight I do have from falling off! People are so rude and quick to point out how thin I am, so I dread hearing what they would have to say if I lose too much...and of course, for my own health, it would be a sign that I am not getting enough nutrition if I can't keep from losing weight so I just want to avoid that for many reasons! Once this is all over, I hope my enhanced chewing abilities will make it possible for me to maintain a higher/healthier weight but I will have to wait and see if that will happen.

I have tried to do a few blogs since getting my braces and haven't been able to keep up past a few posts, but I will try to do a better job with this one. I probably wouldn't have had the courage to go through with this had it not been for the many journals I read detailing the pre surgery optimism, the post surgery frustrations and depression and then the final entries where we find out that after the recovery, everyone always comes to the conclusion that it was all worth it.