Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Day 7

Yeah! It's finally been a week!

Today went by pretty fast, however I felt kind of weird today. I don't really feel sick but more like I'm right in the middle of "the post-op naseau" and the "get on with your life" phase. I was up today more than I was sitting down, so that's always a positive. I've also been eating right around 1200 calories a day these last few days. I figure this is perfect because 1.) I'm not doing anything too physical all day, so most of those calories are just going toward the healing process. 2.) It's just below my tolerance for "syringing" mililiter after mililiter of horrible vitamin drinks down all day. 3.) My weight hasn't really fluctuated.

My mouth has also been feeling really weird, because of all the pressure and numbness going on. I have pins & needles all over my face and it almost hurts it's so intense! I feel so much pressure on my face, it kind of feels as if my skin doesn't belong to me. My palate is also starting to swell up right in the middle. I take it this is where he broke and expanded my jaw. I hope it's just extra fluids waiting to be absorbed and not an infection...! Swelling hasn't gone down anymore and is almost comical right now. I kind of look like a gorilla with the bottom of my face all puffy and sticking out.

On a side note, yesterday I happened to notice that my chin looked a little crooked (I guess there's a lot of that going on around here...) My concerns led me to take a pencil and use it to line up my nose, top 2 teeth and bottom 2 teeth to see if they were inline. I have to say I'm VERY pleased to see that they line up almost perfectly. Then I went to my chin to see what else the problem could be. I took a closer look and noticed that the swelling was like 1/2" on the crooked side of my chin and this continued on past my normal jawline. So I guess it's just a rediculous amount of swelling and I feel stupid for doubting my surgeon...

Well, I gotta go sip some liquid poison (those meds taste nasty!)

2 comments:

amycq said...

It's hard to be patient when you're home all day with not much to do!! But I would say yeah, alot of the crookedness is uneven swelling. I see some awkwardness in my nose but even after 4 weeks...I still have swelling in that area and I have to be patient with it! It's tough!! :)

If you are like me, the second week is where a lot of the swelling went down and you start looking like 'normal' again!

Patrick said...

You're absolutly right about seeing a difference in week 2. I slept 10 hours last night, which is a new post-op record for me. I actually had to drag myself out of bed in order to take my antibiotics at 4:00AM. I looked in the mirror and the swelling has gone down overnight! My face also feels a little more "normal" (not as much pressure).

I guess you hit the nail on the head- Week 2 is the "magic" week!