Day 19

Well, I didn't sleep as much as I wanted to last night, but this time it wasn't even related to my jaw... At 3 am, I was sleeping pretty soundly while my husband was still working on setting up his new computer (we're night owls), when all of a sudden we lost power, and the fire alarm started blaring off. Rude awakening, to say the least! Now, the fire alarms ring so often here that we normally do a smell check for smoke/burning in the hallway and outside, and then we wait 5 minutes before deciding to get out. I know it's kind of bad, but seriously, we're on the 8th floor and it's such a pain to get the cat out of whatever crevasse she slid in to hide from the fire alarm and into her carrier. But since we lost power, it felt really scary, so we scrambled to get the cat, get dressed and get out.

It was 33 F (1 C) so it was pretty chilly, but I had a nice coat so I was fine. The funny thing is, most of the people from our building stayed in the lobby, too afraid of the cold to get out. My husband and I were too concerned that it might have been a gas leak or something so we preferred waiting outside on the other side of the street haha. We waited about 30 minutes until the firefighters let us back in saying there wasn't any danger but they didn't know why the alarms rang.

The power was still not back, so we had to climb EIGHT flights of stairs. I was a bit worried that I wasn't fit enough to do it, but I succeeded! VICTORY! I was completely out of breath though, a lot more than pre-surgery, which is normal of course. I'm just glad I didn't feel faint or anything.

With so much adrenaline running through my veins, I had trouble falling back to sleep and ended up reading until 5am, so I didn't get much sleep during the night. But for once, it wasn't because of pain, so that's good! Speaking of pain, the jaw jerks are pretty much gone again! It happened about twice today but the pain was a LOT more tolerable and didn't last as long. It seems like it's just my jaw getting used to looser bands, so I should expect it next time my surgeon makes a change.

Face update; still not much change in swelling, still have a yellow-ish bruise on each side, still have folliculitis (and I actually used a zinc soap bar on my chest tonight to see if it would help):

I was hoping the surgery would erase my
laugh lines, but nope :(

In the afternoon, I guess I felt empowered by the fact that I had climbed eight flights of stairs the night before; I figured I could go back to walking to the grocery store like I used to. It's about 10 minutes away, which is pretty close. The trip went very well, I got almost everything I needed, but of course forgot one ingredient I needed for tonight's dinner, so I had to change my plans. Oh well. I was a little out of breath on the way back, and the cold air makes the inside of my nose burn. It's still pretty sensitive in there since I got a septoplasty as well. I don't talk about it much because there isn't much to report on it. The only symptoms are a little soreness when I pinch it or wiggle it, and now the burning feeling when I walk in the cold. It feels kind of like when you had a bad cold and it's ultra dry and burning.

I had my trusty caddy for the grocery trip, which made everything much easier. I love this thing! You can bend the handle in half and hook it at the end of your shopping cart, which is super useful.

This also looks like a paid sponsor, but sadly it's not, lol.

The rest of the day, I worked on editing some videos. I make montages of big holidays or trips we take, but these past few years, I haven't had much time to make all of them. So right now I'm working on Christmas 2014. Yeah, that's how late I am, hah! Hopefully I can catch up during my last week off. I've gotten so much faster at making them, so there's a good chance I'll achieve that goal!

I took a one-hour nap after dinner, which was glorious. I'm definitely still tired, no improvement on that front, but then again I didn't exactly have a restful night last night so... We'll see.

Oh, one thing to mention: I can now sleep flat on my back and on my side without any problem! It hurts a little bit at first, but eventually goes away. When I wake up, there's a little bit of cramping, but that also goes away quickly. I'm so relieved. Sleeping on my side is SO much more comfortable, it feels like a warm bath after a walk in the winter night. Can you tell I'm excited about side sleeping? :P