I remember when I was religiously studying the blogs of other jaw surgery patients before my surgery, I wondered just what they were doing with their lives at this point now that the surgery was out of the way. I'm a very linear thinker and I tend to center my life around the next big thing coming for me. Now, I've been looking forward to having this surgery for the past 5-8 years. This was HUGE for me! I would read these people's blogs and think, "What are you doing with your life‽ Is your life just bland now? What do you have to look forward to?"
Well, I'll tell you. Time absolutely flies once you begin healing and before you know it you'll be sitting in AP English 11 not really listening to the lecture on methods of argumentation and think to yourself, "Goodness me! How ever did it get to be a month thrice already?"
In all honesty, I don't think like that nor am I certain that I used thrice correctly in that last sentence, but you'll deal.
Seriously, though, three months kinda sneaked up on me without much really changing since last month. Healing is a slow, constant process so new things are coming up every day and, ask anybody that spends any time around me, I still talk about my surgery and face constantly. I'm not kidding, I never shut up about it.
So, maybe a blog post will get some of it out of me and you all can stop hearing about it for a while.
But probably not.
I've been going back and reading some of my first posts and making little notes about things I never followed up on or wasn't exactly clear about that I thought you might want to know, so... here.
1- Um, I'm pretty lazy and all I wrote down on this one was "fish." I have no idea what I meant by that so I'll come back to it if I remember.
2- Last night I remembered my time spent in the hospital and having to go to the bathroom with my morphine drip and whatnot. Thinking back on it, it's pretty funny, because my thought process was so messed up because of all the medications I was on. I remember thinking "BATHROOM. I SEE BATHROOM!" and then I yelled something along the lines of "BAHHHRGOOHN!!!!!!"
"What, honey?"
Why don't they understand? I need to go to the bathroom. Now!
"BOONPRAWN! BARFGOON! AGHHHHHH!"
I think there was some kicking and whining before I emphatically jerked my whole body in the direction of the bathroom, pulling on my IV painfully.
Finally, either my mom or the nurse understood and took, like, and hour to unhook my oxygen mask and IV. The nurse told me to "hold on" but we all know I didn't. The last time a nurse told me to hold on, I decided to half-consciously roll my wheelchair down the hallway. This time I stood up, took a few confident steps, and pretty much fell into a wall or something. Like I said, my mental process was all messed up and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I felt exactly the same way I did every other time I've had surgery.
Needless to say, I was more careful the next 5000 times I had to go to the bathroom that night.
3- Speaking of my IV, that thing hurt. I'm not really complaining or anything because I was fortunate enough to have morphine, but why should it hurt that much to get something to make me feel better. The tube was in my hand (my thin, frail hand) and I could literally feel the medicine entering my bloodstream through the stretched, open wound. I lived.
4- I hate being snapped at. I bring this up because the first thing I remember upon waking is a lady snapping at me saying, "Susan, stay with us. We need you to--." At this point I understood that they needed my cooperation getting me into a new gown and bed, but the snapping killed that for me so I immediately succumbed to sleep. They managed, I didn't have to be snapped at.
5- I was looking back at some of the comments on my old posts and, boy, was I doped up. Everyone was telling me that I was brave and an inspiration, you know, usual surgery things. But what's different is my response.
No joke, here is an actual quote:
"Thanks guys! But really, it's everyone who's keeping me in their thoughts and prayers that are the inspiration. You, my wonderful friends and family, are what's keeping me going right now.
I love you all!"
I am a snarky, cynical, narcissistic jerk. Normal me would have simply said, "Duh."
But no, I just had to go put myself out there like that.
It's a shame, really.
6- After I got home from the hospital, I was too sore and weak to bathe for a while (judge me, please do) so when I finally found one of those little sticky things they put all over you at the hospital, it had been on me for maybe two weeks. Baths make me feel better when I'm sickly, so I had laid in the water a lot before I ripped it from my skin, which makes me wonder what exactly they use to stick those on you. I swear, it was like taking a breathe-rite strip off your nose.
7- I don't know if you remember me talking about the terrible time I was having drinking from a straw, but I would like to tell you it's gotten much better. It hasn't, but I would like to anyway. I don't really like drinking out of straws much, so I hadn't noticed I wasn't improving with this until I went to Zaxby's with my friend the other day.
"Here, have a sip!" she said innocently.
"OKAY!" I replied oblivious. So I picked up her drink and stuck the straw in my mouth and attempted to make suction. Then I remembered that the only way for me to drink out of a straw now is for me to stick it in the very corner of my mouth, bite down on the straw, and use all of my strength to create a vacuum. This is just a slobbery mess so I put the drink down.
You could say it sucks, but, you know, it doesn't.
See what I did there? Yeah.
7- Lastly, I never finished my story about peach picking. I said I would tell you about it, but I never did.
Me and my grandparents got up even earlier than old people usually do and drove to a peach orchard that was obscenely far away from where they live. On the way we stopped at Jack's and I learned that my grandmother picks the middle (a.k.a. the good part) out of her biscuit and puts mustard on it, which is as completely unappetizing as it sounds. Anyway, we got there and the owners had this adorable dog named Elvis that would come charging through the knee high grass while you were picking and scare you. Although, if you were able to see him coming it would just look like there was an extremely large, extremely fast snake coming for you. It was something straight out of a horror movie. A horror movie named Elvis.
Regardless, I was not good at peach picking. I didn't really know what to look for and after sinking my fingers into my fifth worm infested peach I told my grandmother to just let me hold the basket. Of which, they picked nearly 20. It was exhausting and my shoes were soaked, but it was really peaceful and the weather was abnormally pleasant for late July in Alabama. All I really got out of the experience, besides time with my grandparents was the knowledge that stepping on a rotten peach is remarkably similar to stepping in dog poop.
Well, I still have absolutely no idea what "fish" was supposed to mean so I'll move on to what's not exactly new or old.
I mentioned last month that I still couldn't feel my upper lip, through my philtrum and that I had no feeling inside of my mouth either. The first part is still true, but I am now able to feel behind my front teeth a little. Feeling is feeling, which is good, but it's extremely sensitive right now. Eating chips and brushing my teeth is torture, but both are necessary things in life so I'll get over it. I think the six month mark is when you're supposed to be able to say, "This is the feeling I have, this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life" so if I don't start getting some feeling soon I'll probably have permanent nerve damage.
Since I've gone back to school I've learned of three other kids that had jaw surgery over the summer too, but they were only single jaw surgery patients. I'm an overachiever and just HAD to have double!
I'm not really friends with any of those three, so I don't know if it would be different if I was, but I can't tell a difference in any of them. I think, and I'm working purely off of rumor here, that one had an overbite, one had an open bite, and the other had a less severe underbite. Knowing that even a jaw surgery patient wasn't able to spot the differences in them makes me wonder if I even look that different. I sure think I do, in fact I think I look fabulous, but a few of my friends have said that they didn't even notice I had surgery. And one of my teachers from last year told me, "I like your hair!" Because it's not like I changed my whole face or anything. I haven't even done anything different with my hair.
People! I was gross, and now I'm not! Why can't you see that‽ It does lift my spirits, though, to hear some of the things people say about me, because I know some people have noticed.
Some of my favorites are-
"That girl looks like this other girl that goes here named Susan."
"Is that Susan's cousin or something?"
"Excuse me, but you look a lot like this other girl. What's your name?"
One of my friends said the other day that when I left the room a girl said, "Did anybody read her blog over the summer? It was hilarious!" So thank you to you too!
And just today my friend Jason told me out of the blue, "Your jaw looks nice!"
I really don't think there are any words out there to describe how much I love hearing that.
Since the surgery I've enjoyed new activities such as rubbing my newly defined jaw line and poking my cheekbones that came out of nowhere. Not to mention, my extremely pleasing dimples that I have again. I love them!
All in all, I just feel good about myself. At the beginning of the year I even demanded that this guy in my history class be friends with me. Old Susan wouldn't have done that. Old Susan didn't talk to people. Mostly because Old Susan didn't like people, but I'm trying to be more personable. Trying.
I've been working at this thing for nearly two hours now, so I'll close by telling you of my cold.
I don't get sick, it just doesn't happen. But I've had a yucky cold this week, my first since the surgery, and it's like this terrible relapse into Beak Nose. When my nose was weird and hooked I didn't breathe out of it because I was not physically able, but now I freely breathe without my mouth. Except now I'm all stuffy and it's making me feel claustrophobic. I've told you about the funky nerves in my face not exactly acting right, and now every time I sniff my runny nose a nerve above my front left tooth spasms and it's totally disorienting. But whatever, the very first sentence in my first post surgery blog was that I wouldn't constantly complain on this blog so that is that and I'm done talking about it.
Ain't she a beaut?
I mean, look how defined that is! And compare it to what is quite possibly the worst picture ever taken of me.
Ugh, I don't even know how I've come so far as to be able to show this to the whole world.
Okay, now please just glance at it, maybe think a few nice things about how much more AMAZING I look now, then scroll down and forget about it forever. Whatever you do, just please forget about it.
A) Now that school's started, I'm reading a million books
B) My weight is pretty much staying at around 110 pounds now
C) I'm not really actively doing anything regarding my recovery, so that's not relevant.
So, if you've stuck with me to this point, I want to say thank you and that soon (I really mean it!) I'm going to be adding a few more pages that you can look out for.
Night!