Week 10

Welcome to week 10, where finally, not much has happened and it's alright!

This blog post will probably be much shorter than the other ones. Although I've been known to say this and lie, so don't quote me on that.

This week was pretty uneventful, as I didn't have any appointments with any doctors. Still chugging along on trying to get my iron up. Still fatigued, but hopeful! It was a quieter week at work, and my husband was gone for most of it on a business trip. Unfortunately, he came home yesterday night with the flu; body aches, high fever, headache. The whole nine yards 😷.

I'm obviously scared about catching the flu, but I don't want to let him suffer alone, so I've been taking care of him and cuddling him, but washing my hands very often and not touching my face. Unfortunately, he has a bad habit of coughing without covering, no matter how much I ask him to cover, so I've definitely been exposed to the virus multiple times by now. We both had a flu shot (at the same time), so it looks like it wasn't good enough to save him, but he seems a bit better today. Hopefully it will at least shorten the duration/severity of the illness.

I keep wondering if it's possible to infect the healing bones if you get some sort of respiratory illness. The upper jaw cut looks like it's pretty much at the bottom of my sinuses, so it has me a bit worried. Then again, I'm 10 weeks post-op, so it shouldn't be that bad, right? I guess only time will tell.

Pain
I've had a few "zings" of pain here and there near the cuts on both my upper and lower jaws. They only last a quarter of a second, more like an acute pinch and they're gone. I'm thinking it's just the bones healing, kinda like when you have a scrape and it itches randomly under the scab while the skin reforms. There's no new swelling, redness or anything, so I'm confident it's not an infection. And the pain is so short-lived that I'm not worried for now.

Swelling
Not much change I think?

Although I'm noticing the "dents" where the surgeon made the cut a lot more. I guess it used to be more swollen there so they were hidden. It's supposed to fill up in a few months.

It's also been the first week where I haven't had one moment of "hating" my face. I'm very happy about this! I'm still not at the "loving my face" stage yet, but I'm just happy I'm no longer looking at myself in the mirror and thinking I look manly. Big improvement! I'm also a lot less self-conscious about people looking at my profile. Pre-surgery, I used to be embarrassed when I'd cross a road in front of a bunch of cars. I always figured they have nothing to look at but me, so they're probably sitting there, studying my profile. I'm sure they weren't, but I still felt uncomfortable about it. Now when the feeling creeps in, I remember that my profile looks pretty normal now, and I walk straighter and more confidently. It feels SO great!

Numbness
Getting better every week, but like I said before, extremely slowly. I can follow an object moving on the surface of the numb area, and I get lots of "zings" around the lip. Good signs!

Diet
Still haven't had a chance to eat chicken yet, mostly because I've been super lazy while my husband was gone. I mostly ate noodles, rice, mac & cheese. Stuff that's easy to make or zap in the microwave. I have no desire to cook when it's only for me. Tonight, I'll be making my chicken lemon soup to help with my husband's flu, and I'm planning on keeping the chicken pieces fairly big instead of shredding them to pieces like I've been doing since the surgery. I'm also eating untoasted white, soft bread with peanut butter and strawberry preserve in the morning. So delicious! Oh, and we ordered some dessert crêpes from Crepevine this afternoon. My husband was craving it. Whatever he's willing to eat right now, I'll get for him! He needs energy 😟. And well... it wasn't exactly a punishment for me either...

Got this pic from Yelp because I ate mine so fast,
I didn't have a chance to snap a picture.

I couldn't eat the edges though. They were too crispy.

Fatigue
Same, but once again, I had a couple of really bad nights (totally unrelated to the surgery), especially last night. I slept maybe 2 hours because I was worried about my husband's high fever, and he kept tossing and turning, poor guy. Another night, I went to bed at 10 pm and woke up at 1 am, unable to go back to sleep. That was weird. I can't help but think it's a good sign, as I would usually be able to fall asleep in a wink for 10-12 hours if I wanted to. Maybe it's a sign that I'm more rested, but the fatigue is caused by my iron problem? I feel like I've said something similar last week or the week before. I'm probably just rambling; what else is new? 😅