Day three

The last two days, up until my last post, have been rough ones. There's been a couple of times where unfortunatetly the pain got a head of me and those were some low lows for me. I find the pain is more manageable at night, or at least the medication lasts longer during the night then during the day, mostly because I think I'm not doing anything else besides resting during the night. There's no one to talk to, there's no where to go, all I can do is rest. I'm still on the narcotic pain medication, along with Tylenol, but hopefully I'll be able to wean myself off of the narcotics over the next couple of days and only need to rely on the Tylenol for pain relief.

I remembered a couple of the points I had wanted to mention in my last post. The first was about my elastic configuration. When I woke up in recovery in the hospital, the first thing I noticed about my bite was that my teeth weren't touching. I was able to stick my tongue clear through the front teeth. This was for no other reason than my jaws weren't secured tightly. Initially I had even wondered if i had eladtics in place, that maybe my doctor had not put them in for some specific reason. When I saw him Tuesday morning he removed some gauze from the lower gums and assured me that there were elastics in place, but I only needed two loosely configured elastics because everything had already come together nicely. There have been times since then that I wondered if this is what has been contributing to my pain, since im forced to keep my bite in mind all the time and do what I can to make sure my teeth come together. It does take a fair amount of force to place my teeth together, since at rest right now they don't fall nicely in place. I've also been afraid that I would unknowingly bite into my check if/when I tried to bring my bite together. Since everything is so swollen I honestly don't know if there is feeling in my checks or not, they're just fat and take up a lot of space:( I hope this gets better over the next couple of days though.

The other problem I've been having is with breathing. Since the surgery I have had a hell of a time trying to breathe through my nose, it's completely plugged. I found out after surgery that Dr. S had to remove a bunch of polyps from the right nostril because he said it was just a mess in there. I'm not sure if the left nasal cavity didn't have any polyps or he wasn't able to get to it, but he was definitely concerned about what he saw and said he would be prescribing a nasal spray shortly ins couple of days. I haven't gotten that prescription yet, but hopefully soon! I had to pick up breathe right strips on the way home from the hospital because my nose has just been so bad. And the strips don't do much, I still can't breathe properly, but it's still a huge improvement compared to if I don't wear them. Initially I had only picked up a vaporizer thinking that that would help and be sufficient for recovery, but I was wrong and had to get an actual humidifier and that has been running non stop since I mgot home in my face. Aside from the pain that hits if I fall behind on the meds, this breathing problem would be my number one complaint about surgery. And it's be because it's a constant thing, it has not improved at all:(

Anyways though, I said yesterday was a rough day, but I think it's partly my fault. I woke up feeling good, was able to take a bath in the morning, got all my meds in me and then at 10 my dad and step mom came to take care of me for a couple of hours. This allowed them to spend some time with me and for my mom to get some errands done. They were here from 10 until 1 and I didn't rest much at all during that time. Granted, I didn't do much either, but I was fairly interactive with them, either through trying to talk, or with my white board. And up until then I don't think there has been a stretch of a 3 hour time period that I've stayed awake for. I'm in and out of naps all day/night. But as soon as they left it hit me and I wasn't able to talk much for the rest of the day. I don't blame them at all for that, it's my fault for over doing it, I just have to watch what I'm doing because that was a lot of pain to have to go through in the afternoon for a couple hours of visitor time.

I'll update with some pictures in the morning, this is about all I have the energy for right now. I do want to also say thank god for my mom! I would not be surviving at all without her. I know she's been exhausted the last couple of days because we're on a tight schedule through the night to stay on top of the meds, but she's there, anytime I call her and wake her up for something. And she hasn't complained at all about it and she tries what she can to make me feel better when things get uncomfortable and she knows I'm I'm pain. So thank you, thank you thank you, mom!!!