Day 21

If you've read my last post, you know that I bumped my chin on the handle of a laundry basket while bending down, which sounds like an incredibly stupid way to even almost accidentally mess up your jaw surgery. Thankfully, it seems like no harm was done, and when I texted my surgeon, he said it should be fine. Phew! Let's just say I'll be ultra-extra careful from now on. My husband suggested that we get one of those dog cones to wear around my neck so that I'm more aware of my jaw. Although I appreciate the thought (not really), I feel like I would be even more prone to bump my face everywhere since I wouldn't be able to see anything.

Also, my husband insist on calling it "The Chincident" and really wants me to add it as a title, but I prefer keeping the pattern I have. There, I put it in the blog as a compromise :P

In contrast with yesterday, today was quite the lazy day. Since I went to sleep at 5 am and woke up at 9 am to text the surgeon, I ended up going back to sleep on and off until 1 pm. I kept dreaming about different ways my surgeon would answer my text. It varied widely from indifferent to yelling at me and having me back in the surgery room immediately. Let's just say it was not the most pleasant sleep I've had. He finally had some time to answer me around 11 am, so afterwards my sleep was a little more restful.

I spent the rest of the day playing Dota with some friends and working on more video editing. Nothing too exciting.

I did have some pain on the right side of my mouth towards the back, which freaked me out because of yesterday's mishap, but I honestly thing it's my braces mangling my inner cheek. I put a wad of wax in there, hoping it would help. The pain has subsided, so hopefully that was it. This reminds me: I tried using wax early on, maybe around Day 8, and it was the worst idea ever. I still had painful stitches and everything, so modeling the wax around my braces was painful and difficult, and the next morning, I could not for the life of me remove it all. It's so much easier to remove wax from your back molars when you can open your jaw and give your fingers some space. When everything is sensitive and your teeth are banded shut? Not so much. I gave up and ended up finding bits of wax on my toothbrush for the next five days. Fun times. At least now with the stitches all gone and the incisions healed, it'll be easier to remove.

On a different note, I've been struggling to keep up the calorie intake. I'm getting really sick of the liquid diet. I was already not a fan of it before the surgery. I'd sometimes have smoothies, but mostly because it's an healthy way of eating more fruits and veggies, but I never really liked liquid food, or even soup. I'm more of a stew kind of person. I've been barely making it to 1500 calories every day. Even when I'm hungry, I start drinking my food and I'm like "ugh, can this stop please". It takes me forever to finish not because it's difficult (I now just drink it straight from a glass, no straws or anything), but just because I have no desire to actually "eat" it. Plus, having to prepare everything is so annoying to me, especially since I don't enjoy that much anyway.

A few of the products I like right now.

So to help a bit, I started buying what I call "calorie supplements". It's basically already prepared smoothies and drinks that have between 200-300 calories that I can just grab and drink without having to blend and clean and all that stuff. I'm actually enjoying the yogurt smoothies since they are much closer to yogurt than smoothies. And chocolate milk does taste better than anything else. I usually have these at the end of the day, when I'm a little under 1500 calories and I just need an extra push. They do have a lot of added sugar though, but at this point, I just want to ingest enough food to heal.

I tried to take a nap after dinner, but had another dreaded and painful jaw jerk and gave up. Hopefully my joints will calm down again soon.

My face for the day:

Again, I don't think there's any change. I really should stop posting pics of the day... Do you guys still want to see them, or just when something actually looks different?

I just realized that today marks three weeks since the surgery! Only one more week to four, and then we can remove the bands. At least that's the estimate that my surgeon gave me before the surgery. Crossing fingers!