Day 32

Now that we've moved into January, I won't be able to use the date to know what day I'm on! :P Since my surgery was on November 30 and Day 1 was Dec 1st, it was really easy to keep track. Oh well, starting tomorrow, I'll mostly be calling out weeks instead of doing a daily post anyway!

Today, I wanted to update you on my first time chewing!

Last time I used a spoon to eat pudding, I realized that my utensils were far too big to fit between my teeth without scraping all the food out. It was annoying. So I bought these tiny baby utensils at the grocery store today.

They're actually kinda cute!

My new best friend.

I spent the day without rubber bands and ate my normal liquid diet in the morning and for lunch. Finally, at dinnertime, I felt ready to try chewing. Since I read other blogs, I knew it was going to be a challenge, and I knew I should expect it to go way worse than I think. When the surgeon tells you that you can finally eat soft foods, it feels like the heavens open up and angels start to sing. You kind of figure that all you have to do is put food in mouth, bite down, good to go. I was very apprehensive because my joints have been hurting off and on since the surgery, especially when I try to do lateral movements. I had a feeling it would be an obstacle to chewing.

So knowing that it was going to be hard, I went with something super easy: mashed potatoes. I know a lot of jaw surgery patients at week 3 or 4 are already stuffing soft foods into their mouths and swallowing them whole, but I'm too afraid of choking so I never tried. I stuck diligently to the completely liquid/blended diet until today. Which is why I was so excited to try mashed potatoes! I sprinkled some shredded cheese on top and nuked it in the microwave a bit. It looked like this:

And in my mouth it went.

Let me tell you folks: when you read on other blogs that chewing for the first time feels weird and hard, believe them. And actually, I'm sure you already believe them. I did. But I just did not understand how it would be weird and hard. Let me try to describe it.

First, you have no lateral jaw movement. All you can do is open and close your teeth together. But you can't feel most of your teeth, so you can't actually tell if they're touching together, let alone touching any food. The other problem is that you tongue has no idea what to do. Whatever you were doing before the surgery, you weren't paying attention; it was all automatic. After one month of no chewing and a new configuration inside your mouth, your tongue feels lost. Are you supposed to move the food here, or there? Should your tongue go there? Should it stay out of the way? Placing the food between your teeth is your tongue's job, but then it's hard to tell when it's in there, and if the food gets on the other side, between your teeth and your cheek, then it's really hard to get it out. Your jaw needs lateral movement to allow your tongue to get that food back in.

Also, I'll be honest, it hurts. I can't feel most of my teeth, yet I can feel the pain of pressure on some of them. It's the same pain as when you get your braces on for the first time, or when they change your wire or something.

And then there's joint pain, at least for me. Pain when I apply pressure on a piece of food that's a littler harder, but also pain when your jaw tries to go lateral. To me, it basically feels like the jaw is pooped out of the socket, so whenever I try to go sideways, it's like bones are blocking the movement. I'm sure it's not, but that's what it feels like. Sometimes one particular movement will make me feel like it went slightly out of alignment, and then any movement hurts until I press on the joint with my fingers and it grinds a little, then it's fine. It's not HORRIBLE pain or anything, it's just annoying.

So yeah, it feels like chaos in there when you try to chew. Food seems to go everywhere you don't want it to go, you can't keep it in check with your tongue because it's so clumsy, you keep biting up and down on nothing and sometimes you get something but it hurts, and it's happening all over inside your mouth. It's overwhelming.

Mind you, this didn't happen so much when I ate the mashed potatoes. It was so soft that most of it was smashed on the roof of my mouth and I swallowed it. I ate the whole bowl, and then I had a pudding with my tiny spoon, and that was also just smashed around with my tongue and swallowed. The texture was nice! And the baby spoon was a lifesaver. Fits perfectly into my mouth!

The problem was I tried to eat a super soft, chewy cookie that I made later during the night. I did not enjoy it at all. Even a tiny bit of crisp from the underside was too hard to handle. I just couldn't keep the food in check. I felt like my tongue was a shepherd's dog on its first day trying to herd a group of rabid sheep.

Oh chewy cookies, you used to be so kind to me.

I didn't even taste or enjoy the cookie bite; I was too focused on trying to chew it and guide it around. It didn't feel worth it at all. Now, I knew I should expect chewing to be hard for a while, and I knew it was going to be worse than I thought, but I still feel extremely discouraged by this. You probably will too, no matter how many times you read about similar experiences on other blogs. It's just hard to imagine, pre-surgery, how challenging chewing can be!

And it's frustrating. After spending a month working through all these symptoms and feeling like shit, and finally thinking you're out of the woods, you realize that now you have to learn how to chew all over again. It seems like such a simple task that you can't help but feel mad at your mouth. Like "come on, you stupid jaw, how hard can this be?! JUST CHEW".

Anyways, I don't want to discourage anyone. Eventually, everybody figures it out. It'll work out in the end. I just want to be 100% honest with my recovery experience. In my case, the first chew was completely frustrating and discouraging. Now, I just need to move on, work at it some more over the next few weeks, and wait for it to get better. Everything else got better, so this will too!

The funny thing is, I remembered watching a vlog on YouTube from a girl chewing for the first time after jaw surgery, and thinking how weird her jaw movements were. My husband filmed me tonight for my first bite, and I swear, I had the EXACT same face, movements, reactions, etc. that she did. I found it again, and it made me laugh so much. So yeah, go check it out. This is probably how your first bite will look like, except that internally, there's a lot more freaking out and frustration happening.

One word of advice though, don't try to chew a breaded chicken nugget on your first try. I don't know how she managed that, but I was cringing watching it. It must have hurt so bad! I assumed she just swallowed it whole.