Friday, June 26, 2009

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...

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

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!

Friday, June 12, 2009

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!

Monday, June 1, 2009

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!