So I've been terrible at day by day blogging....apologies! Must try harder :-) Its Day 20 and I'm feeling good! Still very numb from my lower eyelids down to my upper lip, but I'm sort of used to it now and keeping positive and having patience!
I have been keeping a paper diary of my progress, though, and been taking a picture every day. The diary was advised by my dietician and is mainly to record how much fluid / food I'm managing. This was particularly important at the beginning when I was on my syringe diet! Later on it was mainly really useful for keeping track of how much paracetamol I'd taken. They wouldn't let me take the strong pain meds until I ate solid food, but I don't feel like I've needed them (yet?!) anyway.
I'll put the photos and the key milestones from the diary below.
Day 4. Swelling has gone down slightly but bruising is creeping in! I felt sooo glad to be home. My room in the hospital was lovely and the nurses were really nice, but it was a shame I didn't see the dietician until the third day because that delayed figuring out how to drink and swallow, which I struggled with. She brought a much bigger syringe which was the key! I found it easier to stand up and try to drink it. Every swallow was an effort and it was all fairly dribbley, but it felt great to get something in. Ahhh the joys of home :-)
Day 5: Bruising is beeeeeautiful! Check out that gorgeous blossom. And yes, yes...that is indeed a patch of drool on my top. It's a sexy time! It didn't hurt though; that's the joy of extensive numbness. As I've said before, there's more a feeling of pressure and a bit like you have a really heavy mask on your face. The challenge in these few days was not being able to sleep through the night. I would wake up maybe three times, and waking up always felt quite horrible. My jaw was achey, my throat was dry, I had a jawish headache. I found the best thing to do was get up, have some water, take some paracetamol, put some ice packs on my face for about ten minutes, then try to get back to sleep. I even danced around the kitchen with my mum at 1am. Whatever cheers you up!!! According to my diary, this was the first say I managed to tentatively sip from a glass! Every day brings a small victory :-)
Day 6: Looking much better and far less emotional by this point. I was very positive for the most part on those first few days, but I'd have very weepy moments when it was just all a bit much. I was very much warned that this would happen though, so if you feel like absolute HELL in the first few days, try to bear with it. I was all doom and despair and pitiful tears at times. It was a pretty dark time, but just soak up the hugs, do what you can to make yourself comfortable and remember it WILL get better. Like a lot of people have said on their blogs, I found my visions of a comfy time on the sofa watching box sets and occasionally drinking a smoothie were faaaaar from reality in those first few days. But it is so much better now :-) I went on quite a few gentle walks. I really recommend getting out of the house if the weather is good. And having people tease you I found very helpful too :-) It's important not to take yourself too seriously during all this! Bruising was subsiding on Day 6. Still swollen / numb, although the outer and upper parts of my face were starting to unfreeze. I managed to eat some more 'normal' food - yoghurt, blended chicken soup, blended porridge, and blended baked beans with mash.
Day 7: Getting more expression back! Bruising is still going down. In overshare news, my tummy was back to normal by this day. I think the combination of anaesthetic, lack of fluids and then a liquid diet kind of messed me up for a few days, but I was feeling much better by now. This was the day I discovered the trick of tinned pasta! Fresh pasta is a little too gluey, but tinned hoops or ravioli work really well (blended!)
Day 8: Pretty similar really. The victory for today was that I managed to brush the biting surfaces of my teeth! I'd managed to get a baby toothbrush in there to do the front surfaces for the last few days, but couldn't open my mouth wide enough to do more than that, It felt so nice to brush more! A tip with the Corsodyl they give you: it does stain your teeth quite a lot but is necessary because it's antiseptic and helps heal the gums. I was advised by the dental hygienist to use CURASEPT instead, which does the same thing but without staining. Win! I had my favourite meal so far today - blended salmon, mash and cheese sauce. Decadent!
Day 9: The ability to smile is still increasing! The dietician called to check on me and said it sounded like all was going well. Another great meal, all blended together: mash, chicken, broccoli, chicken tonight sauce. Blending is all about adding liquids! Another smoothie tip: add a spoonful of jam before blending to make them extra yummy.
Day 10: Today I weighed myself for the first time since the op. I'm 5'10 and before the op I weighed 72 kilos. I deliberately ate quite a lot before the surgery! My weight on day 10 was 66.9, so that's a loss of about 5 kilos in 10 days. I think that's about expected. I'm trying to keep up the calories because I know that healing will happen faster if my body has energy! Today I had to go into London to see the orthodontist. This was great for two reasons: 1) he was really impressed with my bite and because I was numb, him putting a wire on didn't hurt, and 2) I got to have a caramel coffee frappacino at Victoria. Ohhhhhh heavenly frappacino.....liquid nectar of the gods! I was also given elastics to wear, which I was kind of pleased about because I was worried my bite might have been messed up because they had to remove the wafer a lot earlier than intended. The orthodontist said he had been concerned about this too, but it wasn't an issue in the end. Yay!
Day 11: Some big old bag bags had developed under my eyes at this point from the sleep deprivation! The bruising had gone down quite a bit. The orthodontist said I was still very swollen, and I think it's probably hard to tell this yourself because your face looks different anyway. You can certainly feel the swelling, and this is exaggerated by the numbness. I could feel more of my cheeks this day and the numbness was mainly concentrated in the centre of my face, around my nose. Still numb from my lower eyelids down to my upper lip.
Day 12: Wonky glasses! :-) I had my ears pinned back so I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses behind my ears like you normally would. I found a way of pinning my hair so they would stay in place! I actually think the glasses distract from the swelling :-) I did notice, which you can't see in this pic, that when I relax my face, my lip droops slightly on my left side. My left side is way more numb than my right side for some reason, and didn't bruise. I have no idea why this is! Today was exciting because I saw Jaw God for the first time since the hospital. He snipped off the stitches on my jaw line (these were tiny, and this didn't hurt), and he said it's all looking excellent. He said it's more common for the lower lip to experience permanent numbness than the upper lip, which is great because I can definitely feel the lower one! It's just going to be a patience game for the rest. I will see him again in three weeks. I got to have another frappacino!!!! Sweet bliss....
Day 13: There seemed to be more movement in my face on this day. My upper lip felt slightly less frozen. There seems to be three stages: 1) total frozen, hard feeling, like a mask, totally numb, 2) softer, feels more like your own flesh, still numb, 3) soft AND some feeling coming back. I definitely noticed some stage 2 and a little stage 3 action happening around my lip by this day!
Day 14: The end of my first two weeks! I remember in hospital my friend Hara, who had this op last year, showed me her day 14 pic. I was after that just always thinking 'come on day 14!!!!!'. She looked nearly normal and much more comfortable. I guess she still must have felt swollen and numb though. I definitely feel infinitely more comfortable than in those first dark days. It's all positive now! I tried wearing makeup today for the first time, as you can see in this pic - just a little. To be honest I didn't like it - it felt so weird putting makeup on skin I couldn't feel! I didn't think it looked right with the swelling either. I thought I'd just continue to go makeup free until I felt most of the swelling had gone down and I could feel the skin more. I'm still makeup free on day 20 :-)
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