Day 3

I felt a bit better in the morning after the scare from the night before, but I was still very weak.

I knew I had to try to eat more, but everything sounded really gross to me. Before the surgery, I bought this meal replacement powder called Joylent. I wanted to buy Soylent, but they had to recall their latest iteration because it was making some people sick. Glad I dodged that bullet! So I got Joylent, which is a simpler, more straightforward version of Joylent from the Netherlands. It's basically oatmeal, soy flour, whey protein, sucralose and a bunch of vitamin. The vanilla flavor is pretty neutral, just a tad sweet, which I thought would work well during recovery. However, the texture is a bit gritty and sand-like. It's not bad, but it does feel like it gets stuck all around my teeth and my braces when I drink it.

Not super appetizing, but the point is to cram calories, right?

So I started drinking some of it mixed with water at first. But I was still not hungry at all, and forcing myself to eat always makes me feel nauseated. It's a problem I've had all my life. Whenever I'm stressed out, sick, sad or whatever, I lose my appetite, and the idea of force feeding is horrible to me. I was kind of hoping that my body would figure out, i.e. I would start feeling hungry once I needed to eat more, and it would be OK if I didn't eat too much on the first few days, but it didn't work out so well.

So on day 3 I had some Joylent throughout the day, feeling frustrated at the incredibly low amount of calories 16 oz of the stuff could hold. I tried drinking Ensure but it was so syrupy and sweet, I couldn't take it. I hated it. It's crazy how before the surgery, I'd have to be careful not to eat too much, staying away from those 900 calories cheesecake slices, and there I was, struggling to eat more than 500 calories a day. Every time my husband gave me a bottle of Joylent or a smoothie, I'd ask "how much calories in there?", and he would be like "this is 250". ONLY 250 FOR A WHOLE BOTTLE?! How was I supposed to take in 2000 calories in a day if I could barely finish half a bottle. Because that's about how much I could stomach: half a bottle, then a break of 1-2 hours, and another half a bottle. I'd start feeling nauseated and grossed out and pushing the next half bottle to later. Also, as other bloggers have mention, there's this annoying "furry" feeling on your tongue whenever you eat, as if it's absorbing all the gunk and becoming this slimy sponge sitting in your mouth. It's annoying, but there's not much you can do unfortunately. Some food are worse than others, like Ensure is pretty bad, smoothies on the acid spectrum (with orange juice for example) are also annoying. Joylent wasn't too terrible but it still added a coat of grossness to my tongue. A few swig of water helps a bit, but it's hard to get rid of it completely.

These are the bottles I'm using. They're 12 oz each and are cute as hell, right? :D

Overall on day 3, I had about 700 calories, which was a LOT more than on the previous days. It did seem to help for a little while. I was able to sit at my desk for about 15 minutes and start writing addresses on envelopes for my Christmas cards. But I soon started feeling faint and had to lay down again. I did this another two times, hoping I would get stronger every time, but the 15-20 minutes was the maximum I could stay upright before starting to shake.

I took a few walks during the day too, and eventually decided to try brushing my teeth, knowing the Joylent "sand" was all over my braces. I was cleared to use a baby toothbrush and my waterpik at the lowest setting from the start, but it was a bit unnerving. The baby toothbrush still felt gigantic in my swollen mouth, and my stitches were painful. Even just swishing water in my mouth was stretching my stitches and hurting, not to mention the pressure in my jaw from bending down over the sink. The waterpik did remove a whole lot of food particle, but at some point I was a bit careless and accidentally flipped the nozzle upward while it was in my cheek. I felt this searing pain in my stitches, and a little blood came out. I freaked out, thinking I might have opened up the stitches, but the bleeding stopped pretty quickly. I still felt very uneasy for a while, wondering if I had shot up some food particles into my wounds or something. We texted the surgeon about it, but he said to just be more careful next time and that it would be fine. Needless to say, I didn't use my waterpik for another day after this and just used the baby toothbrush as much as I could. I also bought these interdental little brushes that you can stick between your teeth at the gum line, and those worked pretty well. I definitely recommend them!

These are good when you can't floss.

After cleaning my teeth, my jaw and stitches were hurting quite a bit, so I took some Toradol for the pain.

The swelling on day 3 was down, which was nice! At least the healing was going smoothly.

I could smile for the first time!

And then, during the afternoon, a lot of things started to make sense: I got my period... It was pretty much right on time but I had hoped the surgery would delay it or even make me skip it. Well, it did not! Even when I'm feeling great and healthy, I get low blood sugar and nausea right before my period. So this was kind of the perfect storm: surgery + period = feeling miserable.

I was frustrated, but at the same time, I knew I couldn't complain too much. I didn't have any complication from the surgery, was breathing fine, pooping fine (TMI?), wasn't in too much pain, etc. It was just the whole weakness/low blood sugar thing that was doing me in. All in all, I'm pretty lucky as far as recovery goes, but I still didn't feel like I was gaining strenght every day like other bloggers were.

Again, that night was difficult. Lots of cold sweat, shakiness, feeling faint, anxiety. The nights are definitely harder than the days. I'm wondering if it's partly because the swelling gets a bit worse, but also just psychologically, when it's dark and quiet, everything feels scarier. I left some lights on and it seemed to help a bit.

I also kept waking up gasping for air, but I didn't know why. Pre-surgery, I bought an oxymeter, knowing that my anxiety would make me feel like I'm not breathing properly even if I am, and I can't recommend it enough to those in the same situation. My oxygen was always around 97-100%, and it reassured me to check it whenever I needed. I'm not sure why I'd wake up gasping for air, given how my airway is so much bigger now and it shouldn't be an issue. I'm going to put this on anxiety. It has a large back :P

This was one of the weirdest nights too. I still had that feeling that I was sleeping at the edge of wakefulness, but still dreaming vividly. I was trying really hard to fall asleep but I couldn't reach the deeper stages and I was getting very frustrated. Wondering if it was the Toradol, I decided to just switch to Tylenol if I ever needed something. At least I know I react normally to that.