Tuesday 7 June 2011

Late Night Show - Day 30 (June 7)

I'm posting at 2 in the morning because my sleep schedule is off, and my mind is in full gear at the moment. I had to register for courses online this morning and it took 3 hours for me to just get on the site to pick the courses I wanted. McMaster does not have a very good system in place, since it's essentially a black friday rush to get in. I'm also making this habit of watching movies at night around this time. I tell myself I'm going to watch a bit of the movie so I can fall asleep within reasonable hours, but just get hooked and the 2 hour film conquers me.

Swelling seems to have hit a sort of plateau. I don't seem to be going down much at all anymore, so I'm going to assume the rest of whatever's left will go down in due time. Taking daily pictures seems sort of silly as nothing changes. I will update my before and after photos with a 4 week shot, and then a 6 and 8 week post op shot. My facial muscles are also starting to come back. This really helps with my around the mouth and cheek muscles which felt generally very tight. I never noticed but it's now much easier to get to the back of my mouth to brush, as before when I reached back there with a toothbrush it would be really tender. I can now stretch my mouth out, and it helps a lot. I hope my lips heal next, as they had a childbirth like stretching in surgery that will only happen once in my life.

I'm starting to go out more and I get the "Wow, you look different" opinion a lot. Not better or worse, just different. I've personally also gotten the "You look younger" comment here and there, thanks as if I didn't look young enough. I hope the youthful 'Disney child star look' is in this year. Apparently the only thing that has stayed constant is my eyes. Note this is from people who I did not tell about the surgery. The social repercussions of this whole surgery is going to be really interesting. For the people that I have told about the surgery, I haven't seen many in person yet. I am curious as to what they will say, but it's not critical for me to get the feedback that makes me feel good. The point of this surgery personally was to get my bite back, and when my braces are off and I can bite into a steak burger with onion rings on the side, I will feel better than any compliment can make me feel. That's my sort of inner rant on this whole surgery, it's functional not cosmetic.

I can open my mouth to fit my index finger in, that is all. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it's enough to slide food in. The foods that I eat are essentially so soft that they break when I close my mouth. I've done some macaroni, vienna sausages, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, lemon meringue, imitation lobster, bread to date. I'm also beginning to think my stomach is shrinking a bit, with this lack of eating a lot of food. I have a feeling my gluttonous assault on food won't be what I predict once I can chomp again, but I guess I can live. This came to me this morning when I made an incredible 4 egg scrambled egg mix with 2 slices of kraft single cheese and montreal steak seasoning. It was delicious. I ate half. I was confused. Leftover food and me don't meet eyes often but today it stared me down and I lost. I'm going to make up for this by making softly cooked pasta tomorrow with ground up beef sauce. I hope it turns out well, as I would prefer to get my protein in food rather than a powder via shake.

Here's a quick picture of my grill. As you can see my teeth are a lot more lined up than my before (I will put the bite changes in before and after later). I'm also missing a top bracket for my braces. It popped off during the expansion of my top jaw, since the wire couldn't handle the pressure. I went to the ortho and he said that it's best not to replace it as the pressure might be too much for my jaw. I'll just keep the unfinished train track look for now. It's unique.

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