DAY 01
JUNE 12, 2014
The night is mostly sleepless due to the coming and goings of the nurses that are tasked with recording my vitals and issuing me little doses of ibuprofen to ease the pain. The incessant sound of the oxygen mask they have given me and the hinderance in ability to breathe also do not aid my need to sleep, but somehow despite sleeping most of the day and all the discomforts inbetween, I am able to fit a couple hours of sleep in. Not my highest score, especially when I need it most, but truth be told I probably got more sleep last night than I did for most of my Junior year of highschool.
Everything about this room is uncomfortable. The size (though I was gracious enough to get a private room), the loud sounds, the lights, the loneliness, the way I feel ; everything about this room makes me miss the comfort of my own room in my own home.
Around 6 am the resident rolls by and is not at all surprised that I am wide awake and have been for quite a while. He looks me up and down and declares that I am fit for dietary advancement onto a full liquid diet.
He tells me my upper jaw has had
Around 6 am the resident rolls by and is not at all surprised that I am wide awake and have been for quite a while. He looks me up and down and declares that I am fit for dietary advancement onto a full liquid diet.
He tells me my upper jaw has had
- a 12 mm advancement (which is huge)
- 2 bone grafts; one on each side
- 4 titanium plates
- and "a lot" of titanium screws (which do not cause panic at airports through the metal detectors)
He also tells me that he'd like me to stay another day "just to make sure" which kind of makes me panic because this place is suffocating and lonely and I dont know if I can take another day of this.
As for eating, I've found that the back of my throat is too thick from intubation that drinking anything sweet or salty is out of the question without being watered down. I'm constantly in fear of choking, even in my sleep, because along with the sore throat, there's also the fact that my nose is so chock full of blood that breathing is out of the question. So I spent a lot of my time trying to walk around and get out of the room, I escape to the restroom when I can, and do rounds in the halls
The swelling I experienced yesterday when I got out of recovery has substantially grown. I can feel the swelling rising uptowards my eyes and it's getting harder to breathe. The peak of the swelling has yet to come. It is predicted the worst days will be 3-4. Afterwards most of the swelling will go down within the next 2 weeks. Residual swelling will take up to a year to go down completely.
Right now I'm just taking it one day at a time.
Here are some progress pictures of today
we went downstairs for breakfast
PROFILE PHOTOS
At this point it's difficult for anyone to understand me so i write messages.
Morning Selfie ~ The swelling isn't so bad at this point
Throughout the day the swelling got substantially worse
