In the morning, I brushed the inside of my mouth for the second time, and this time I used a rubber tip to massage around each tooth as best as I could. There was quite a bit of bleeding, which seems to indicate that the gums are pretty irritated by the gunk that accumulated for almost a month. I'll be using the rubber tip every morning for a while. Hopefully it'll help! Using it on the front teeth is hard though. My mouth doesn't open wide enough for me to maneuver the tool easily.
I can easily fit a finger between my teeth, but not quite two.
Swelling-wise, it's still about the same. It's kind of weird because some days, I like my face, and some days I really don't. I wonder if the swelling actually fluctuates and affects how much I love/hate my face. Maybe there is more swelling now that I'm moving my jaw more? It's not super noticeable, but maybe it's enough to change my opinion about it. For example, my jawline seem to disappear sometimes, and I still can't figure out if it's just about angles or changes in swelling. Ugh. I know I should wait 4-6 months to see the final results, but it's hard to deal with when you see your face every day! Being patient is not easy :P I've seen other bloggers struggle with this, and I totally understand it. I just try to squash the negative thoughts about my appearance and move on. I know for a fact there is still swelling on my cheeks and under my eyes, so I'm hanging on to that for hope. Until it's completely gone, I can't complain about how I look!
After dinner, I had a craving for something sweet, and I had a pudding leftover from pre-surgery. I looked at it, look at a spoon, and decided to try to remove my bands and see if I could fit a spoon in there. It worked! I could only fit the tip of the spoon, and the pudding on top would get scraped by my upper front teeth, but I still managed to get most of it inside my mouth. It was awesome. I still held my chin with my hand just to make sure I wouldn't accidentally jerk it open too wide. I'm also kind of scared that my joints will cramp up and lock my mouth open, but so far it hasn't happened. I keep trying to close my mouth between brushing/spoonfuls just in case.
Now that I'm on the cusp of starting a soft diet, I'm realizing that the liquid diet hasn't been as challenging as I thought, at least not in the way I thought it would be. It was hard at the very beginning when I didn't feel like eating anything at all and had to force feed myself, and it's still hard to reach a good amount of calories every day, but I haven't been TOO frustrated at not being able to eat anything I want. Of course, I get cravings and stuff, but once I got into a routine, it felt easier. I knew what I was going to eat every day, and I just ate it without questioning too much. Four weeks passed quickly like that! Here's what my "feeding" schedule looked like (I sound like a cattle or something):
Breakfast: Ensure or peanut butter banana smoothie (depending on how hungry/in a hurry I am)
Snack: Ensure or peanut butter banana smoothie (whichever I didn't eat in the morning)
Dinner: Blend whatever I cooked/leftovers (usually soup, potstickers, stews, etc.)
Snack: Yogurt smoothie or protein chocolate milk bought at the grocery store
To be fair, I've never had a problem eating the same thing for 3 days and always make sure that every dinner I make will last us 2-3 days just so that I don't have to cook every day, so it might have worked in my favor.
However, I am excited at the idea of eating stuff I'm craving. I've had interesting cravings, like a bag of Combos pretzels, which I NEVER eat or even think about. I don't know why; I just thought about it one day and I've been wanting some ever since. And then of course, when we went to Fry's a few days ago, I walked by the check out lane full of snacks and saw them.
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| Even though I found the liquid diet easier than expected, this makes it a little harder at times... |
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| In case you've never seen these before. Great, now I'm drooling. |
I should make a list of things I'll eat when I can chew normally, but then again, I'm worried about gaining a lot of weight. I have a feeling that my metabolism is all screwed. I don't understand how I could have reached my normal weight so fast and still hold it by eating only 1500 calories of liquid food only. I know I shouldn't worry about this right now, but I kind of am. I'm not sure how to avoid gaining 20 pounds once I start eating normally, and it kind of sucks that I'll have to watch my calorie intake once I can chew again, instead of finally enjoying all the stuff I've been missing. Of course, this could be tied to the thyroid levels problem, but I haven't asked my doctor for a test just yet. I want to give myself time to readjust, in case it fixes itself.
I'm going to end this post on a list of the cravings I've had so far. If you're banded shut right now, let me know what you're craving in the comments. Maybe we can all dream of eating a feast of the food we're missing while we dream tonight :)
- Combos pretzels
- All-dressed chips
- Italian sub
- Veggie pizza
- Orange chicken & chow mein
- See's Candy scotch kisses (although I can't find a link to them on their website and now I'm terrified that they don't carry them anymore... NOOO)
- Onion rings
- Popcorn (although I'll have to wait another 6 months when I'm out of braces)
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