Week 14

Like I anticipated, this week has been pretty much uneventful. This will actually be my last weekly post. From now on, I'll only post every month until the one-year mark.

Pain
No throbbing at all this week, even though I've been eating much harder food than usual! My left joint is still kind of stiff and sometimes hurt when I open my mouth, but other than that, no pain at all.

Swelling
No changes. I've been a lot more used to my new face, but annoyed at the acne and disappointed that the laugh lines didn't get any better with the surgery. Oh well. Like I said last time, we'll see if it improves. I really hope it does!

I'm also trying to find new frames for my glasses. I was due for a new prescription before my surgery, but I decided to postpone it in case my face changed a lot. Now I'm struggling with figuring out what looks good, since I'm still not 100% used to my face. I can't tell if glasses look good or bad, I'm just constantly thinking "Uuhhh I don't know about this but I can't explain why..." Is it because I still don't love my face yet? Or because the style doesn't fit anymore? Or because I'm just not used to this new style even though it fits me well? I don't know. I may need my friends/family's help for this!

Numbness
Still the same as last week, when I could tell that the nerve regeneration slowed down. Not much improvement, but I can still definitely "feel" something everywhere, even if it's not a normal feeling.

Diet
FREEDOM! I'm eating pretty much whatever I want except bagels and chips and stuff. I even ate cereal and the crunch didn't create any problems. Yesterday, I made a huge batch of roasted veggies. I'm so glad I can finally eat some healthy stuff! Root vegetables used to be too hard, even when roasted. But now that I'm cleared for most food, I'm all about it!

Bell peppers, carrots, potatoes, onions, beets and asparagus.

I also realized that orange season is at its peak, so I didn't miss it completely! YESS! I had an orange every day since my visit with the surgeon, and it has been glorious.

At first, I could only eat them cut up in small pieces like in the picture, because the skin is so thin that it's actually kind of hard to chew through it. My teeth don't really touch together all that well, which I think is why I'm having problems. But today I ate an orange the normal way and it was all fine! I feel like my chewing progress is exponential since I've been free to experiment. I didn't run into much problem to be honest. I'm so happy!

Fatigue
I did the iron blood test this morning, so I'll be getting the results later. Still fatigued, but I somehow feel like it's a bit better. I haven't had a chance to sleep more like I wanted to do last week. I really need to get serious about this if I want to eliminate "sleep debt" as a reason why I'm still tired. I'll keep you updated (although maybe none of you really care, maybe you're not getting this surgery for sleep apnea... 😅).

I did get back into working out 5 days a week, doing 20 minutes of cardio. I haven't yet gone back to doing some weights and stretching though. This week will be the first full week of working out since the surgery. I was cleared a while ago to start exercising, but with the anemia, I thought I would give myself another break until my iron goes back up. But I couldn't wait any longer. I felt like a huge, lazy potato. Much better now!