day 8 - i swallowed a pill! whoah!

Hello. day 8 wasn't very fun. I barely slept at all the entire day so i got to savor every wonderful moment. That sounds kind of cynical and depressing. I'm really actually quite up-beat and chipper (just had my vicoden so i might be a little slap happy too).  But....complaining on here is a little therapeutic.   It is my jaw surgery blog after all so i do have the right to moan the agonies and woes i suffer.  In fact, not only is my right, it's my duty.  Some other poor, unsuspecting individual could somehow stumble across this blog looking for insight into the jaw surgery experience before he makes the decision to undergo it.  Now, I could never forgive myself if i were to give that poor, unsuspecting individual the wrong impression that could lead him to making the wrong decision, and that wrong decision would impact his very life.  Yes...I must continue to complain. Lives depend on it.  SO that being said... uhmmm.. today sucked. I am getting better, which is a good thing, but each day I'm learning more and more that the better i get, the worse i feel.   Sure my face isn't swollen 5 times its normal size any more, I can stand up by myself now and I have some feeling back in my face.  I'm more awake and able to function more...But I'm not awake and functioning enough to be satisfying. Its only tempting me.   Now I can smell the dinner my mom is cooking for the family...and unlike before, I'm actually kind of hungry now.  Do you know what its like to walk downstairs, see your family eating chicken and broccoli and corn on the cob and it smells sooooo delicious, and then your mother hands you your dinner - a cup of cream of chicken soup. Its kind of disheartening.  And the aforementioned family doesn't even appreciate what they've got!  Half of them probably didn't even eat all the chicken on their plate.  What a messed up world. So yeah.  That was a tough moment today.  Then i choked on my vicoden, motrin, and water no less than 5 times.  Coughing is similar to laughing. (see last post)   BUT, I've made progress! real progress! i swallowed a pill today! two pills! amazing!!!!  It was really hard but I did it. I can't wait until I'm completely proficient in this whole pill taking thing so I can completely abolish the use of liquid meds.   The reason pills are tricky is because #1, I can't open my mouth very far to put the pill in, and #2, once its in its hard to get it to the back of my mouth and swallow cause,  like i said, i can't open my mouth and the roof of my mouth is mostly numb. Its easy to lose a tiny pill in your mouth when you can't feel it.  I know dozens of people who are perfectly normal and can't swallow pills... So in my condition, I consider swallowing pills an accomplishment. yup. Okay... my vicoden is really setting in now so I'm going to sleep. goodnight.

Day 7 - I punched myself in the nose. oops.

I've hit the one week point. yay. The first week is supposed to be the worst so I'm glad to be through it.  I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty miserable.  Especially the first few days, if you had asked me, I would have told you that I was tricked into this surgery and would never have done it if I had known what to expect.  Glad to be through those days.  Recovery still really stinks though.  I'm sick of liquid meds a million times a day, I'm sick of sleeping all the time because of the meds, and I miss popcorn!!! The absolute worst thing though, is that I can't laugh.  I really like laughing...it always makes you feel good. If you ask my brother, he'll tell you I'm always sitting by myself laughing at nothing.  He used to accuse me of chatting online with people in the middle of the night because there was no way someone could laugh that much by themselves.  But yeah.. no chatting. Maybe I'm just crazy....But I have a lot of funny thoughts! But now I can't laugh.. It has happened a few times, but it hurts SO BAD. oh.my.gosh.  Every bone in my face aches and I can feel the stitches tearing against my braces.  Its horrible.  So every time i've laughed so far, I end up crying too, from the pain.  Its driving me nuts! Earlier today one of those laughing/crying moments took place.  I was trying to suck some cream of potato soup into my syringe and it just wasn't working.  Something must have gotten stuck in the straw part because no soup was going in or out.   I was pulling and pulling and pulling with no success at all when  the syringe finally broke.  All of the force from my hand pulling the syringe was released and it flew back, hitting myself quite hard in the nose...Just like in tug-of-war when the other team decides to let go of their end of the rope so you fly backwards with your end.  Ouch. my nose hurt so bad! Its been pretty numb all this time, but some of those nerves woke up then. Honestly, I thought I had broken something or messed up part of the surgery.  Evidently I'm okay... but you never know! Of course the whole situation was so ridiculous, I ended up laughing...which caused even more pain in addition to my poor nose.  Do these kinds of things happen to other people too?

Day 6 - same old stuff

Slept a ton today....didnt get out of bed until 3:00. Just woke up a little every few hours to take my antibiotics and pain killers.... I might have eaten some peaches around noon and then went back to sleep.  With all this vicoden and sleeping i can barely remember anything!  Thank goodness my mom is keeping track of my drugs and food for me and changing my ice pack regularly. I would be totally lost on my own.    Anyways.....i DID get out of bed eventually and take a shower....brushed my teeth as best as i could (which wasnt very well i'm afraid..)...went downstairs and watched tv a while...had an orange creme freeze from beaners...fell asleep...went back up to my bed....facebook...talked to my best friend a bit on msn...  had some more drugs...a little cream of chicken soup.... a little apple sauce....and thats my day.  The point of all of this is to say, you can't really do much when you have jaw surgery. You just sit there and stare...or sit there and sleep. Its pretty boring and ridiculously exhausting.  Swelling hasn't really gone down much in the last 2 days, but i do have slightly increased feeling in my lips. Starting to get tingles in my cheeks as well as my chin (lots more chin tingles) and the roof of my mouth kind of hurts.  And thats the update.  Most exciting blog ever.

Edit:
I made a really bad mistake on this day.  I went 12 hours without vicoden, only motrin. I thought i was doing okay till i woke up in the middle of the night with agonizing pain, probably the worst its been.  The issue now is that with increased feeling comes increased pain because there are, in fact, 7 broken bones in my face.  Note to self: stay drugged up as much as possible.

Day 5 - home!

It was good to sleep in my own bed last night... more comfortable than at the hospital...But it is still hard to find a good position to sleep in.  Whenever my head is a comfortable position, my back is killing me.. No idea how to solve this.  I spent a lot of the day sleeping regardless. I did sit outside for a while and play the piano a little bit.  Standing for very long makes me nauseous though so my "exercise" is a little limited. I can stand up by myself now, but I'm still very weak and don't really have much of an appetite.  For breakfast i ate some peaches and cream of chicken soup...doesn't sound very breakfast-y but i like how they taste and calories are calories so yeah, i eat what i can.  I was able to chat with a few friends on facebook for a bit, that was nice. I can't wait to actually see people again! No idea when I'll be fit for work though.. My job is talking on the phone to customers constantly...so it'll probably be a few more weeks before i'll be up to that.  I have been talking quite a bit though. My lips and jaws don't really move much... but my tongue is in perfect working condition!  The quality of speech..ehhh well, i'm understandable - most of the time.  Bs, Ms, and Vs are hard to say....or any letter that involves using your lips very much. But i do manage pretty well. :)  My face is still pretty swollen...but is slightly better.  The skin is starting to kind of peel off my lips. It apparently can't handle stretching to the size of texas and going back to normal (well..maybe normal isnt the best word to use yet...)  Probably the most gross part so far is the inability to brush my teeth. I'm going to be working on solving this issue VERY soon. Tingles in my chin are becoming more frequent...still irritating...Still no real sense of temperature on my cheeks, right side of my nose is still numb.  I have some bruising on each side of my chin, but its not horrible.  I definitely can see the resemblance between myself and an orangutan at this point though. 

Day 4 - Going Home

Saturday:  After a "good breakfast" of some cream of chicken soup, pureed peaches and a little yogurt i was pronounced good to go whenever i felt like it.  I was a little hesitant to leave because #1, the drive home takes 10 hours and #2, even though there are a lot of annoying things about the hospital, there are a lot of little conveniences too...Like a whole menu of pureed food, cable tv, my own bathroom, an ice machine that grinds ice just perfectly for my ice pack, and (one of my favorites) a little face mask that blows out cool, moist air.  This helped me so much with breathing! I didn't really wear the mask, since my face was so swollen anyway but I set it near by so it blowed towards me.  I loved it! Anyway....because of the long drive, we left around 9:00am I think.  It was good to be finally free of all IVs in my hands!  My left wrist especially is still really sore though and quite bruised. Its like i got  in a big fist fight or something.  The car ride home was less than fun...we drove our Toyota Rav4, and those seats are NOT designed for comfort in any sense of the word.  I think I'm going to have a permanent back-ache as a result of that car trip.  We stopped semi-regularly at McDonalds to change my icepack and to take my meds.  I have vicoden, motrin and amoxicillin.   The vicoden is definitely the worst tasting. It burns my throat too.  The other 2 drugs aren't so bad though...the motrin might even taste a little good, kind of like a smoothie.  Inevitably, after driving for so many hours, i had to use the bathroom... which meant going into a mcdonalds.. I wasn't thrilled about this because of my freakish swelling...But you gotta do what you gotta do...and it wasn't so bad i guess.  Anyone thinking of having this surgery better just plan and putting any and all of their vanity on a shelf for a while because its not a pretty thing.  You look like a freak and thats just the way it is.  That being said, I cannot wait to not look like a freak anymore!  I don't want to give small children nighmares...and I'd like to be able to eat without spilling down my chin and not even knowing it because I'm numb.  I miss feeling normal.  Jaw surgery stinks. I know i should look try to look down the road and see myself at a time where i can say "this was worth it" but its hard.  I'm not sure if i would have had enough guts to have this done if I had really known what to expect.  Praying for fast recovery!!!!!

Note: i do try to read over what I write on here... But i am heavily under the influence of vicoden, so I know i'm probably missing tons of grammar errors and saying a lot of things that just don't make sense..  please bear with me! :)

Day 3 - Still in the hospital

Friday:  I would say this was the most painful day... i gave it at 4/10. That doesn't sound so high i guess... But i think i have a pretty high pain tolerance so I'm not sure if my scale is a little off to someone else.  But i will give discomfort a 10/10!  Swelling peaked in the morning...and it was bad. My face was probably about 4 times bigger than it normally is... my lips so big they curled over. I felt gross and looked pretty gross too.  Dr. Rieck visited me around 7am again...he said he could check out of the hospital later that day if i felt up to it, or i was free to stay another day.  I didn't really feel up to it so we opted to stay another night.  Time in the hospital goes by soooo slow though! Minutes seem like hours! You feel like it should be 8:00 at night, then you look at the clock and its only 2:00.  I was able to eat some breakfast though... Pureed peaches again along with some pureed eggs.  I ate all the eggs... but they were kind of gross. The texture was just weird...very gritty.  I didn't order those again.  I really like the peaches though.  Pretty tasty. Not really a whole lot else to say about the day.  I took my liquid vicoden every 6 hours... some other antibiotics and meds to help with the swelling through my IV. ...Went for a walk or two to the court yard and back.. Took another shower at night... And thats about it. I decided the best way to pass the time is to just sleep as much as you can.  I've started to get tingles in my chin...very annoying but this means that my nerves are intact and I'm on the way to getting full feeling back. yay!  My chin and lower lip are totally numb though... so i can't scratch or rub away the tingles! I can feel my upper lip, and the left side of my nose (the right side is numb). Feeling in my cheeks is kind of weird. I can tell if i'm touching them... but i can't tell if my ice pack is cold or not. Not sure why this is. I slept a little better this night...but still very disrupted by the nurses. They have horrible timing! 

Day 2 - Day After Surgery

My doctor came to see me at 7am...said everything looked good and as to be expected.  I felt like crap...But at least the doctor was happy. My left hand was really super sore from whatever it was they shoved down my wrist so he checked it out to make sure there wasn't any nerve damage..I wasn't even aware that there was a risk of that..yikes.  I was still hooked up to IVs on both hands, but Dr. Riek took the lovely tube out of my nose... thank goodness.  Its really weird feeling a tube slide up from your stomach, up your throat and out your nose. Really weird. So now my nose and throat are sore because I had the anesthesia line down one nostril and the blood draining tube down the other and I guess during surgery they took the opportunity to straighten out my septum so that probably also had something to do with the soreness/numbness in my nose too..as well as the constant blood dripping out. yuck.  I didn't even know anything was wrong with my septum..sheesh. Dr. Rieck also took the super tight rubberbands off and replaced them with some slightly more  flexible bands that allowed me to open my mouth enough to get a straw in. So now with these changes, it was time to begin the liquid vicoden through the syringe. Nasty nasty nasty. Purple grape juice works pretty well to get rid of the after taste though... then you need to rinse with water to get rid of the grape juice taste.   I feel like you never quite get rid of the taste of whatever you just drank because its so hard to swallow. blahh.  Goals for the day included walking to the bathroom....taking a walk in the hallway...taking a shower...and eating something (i had some cream of chicken soup, some pureed peaches and a little bit of strawberry shake).  All of these goals were met, but drained pretty much all of my energy. I couldn't even stand up by myself i was so weak. I was able to drink a ton of water though.. The doctor told me at his evening visit that I was doing better than any of his other patients had before with the liquid intake.  Pain for the day still never got above a 3/10 but again I would rate the discomfort at a 8/10. I only woke up 3 times during the night though, opposed to every hour, so that was good..But still not very restful.  Having nurses always coming into the room, pumping your IVs with meds, taking your blood pressure, listening to your heart is very disruptive to sleep. I'm not a fan of the hospital.