RustBlog

For certain personal reasons I decided I wanted to see how 'eating' went so tonight I got a 12" meatball sub from Subway.  This was a test to see how I could act 'in public', in a small way.

Eating it was, to put it mildly, an unpleasant trial.   Tasty, but tiring and hellishly messy.    The fact I can't open my jaw wide enough to place my forefinger and index finger between them edgewise, combined with lack of sensitivity in my lips, meant I ended up with marinara sauce all over my face, and food smooshed all over.

I so want to be normal, and every time I fail at this sort of thing, I get to realize more and more that normal is a mirage that as I think I am reaching it, disappears only to pop up again in the distance.

I'm lucky I'm not the type to get depressed, because this is depressing me.   Six freaking weeks, and I can barely drink in public without spilling some from my insensate lips.   Eating in public is basically impossible - even if I get food I can chew, bits fall off as I try to push it into my mouth.

So much for my normal.   I quit.  I give up on normal for now, it'll be another six weeks or more. 

The stitches in my lips are freezing my face - I can't move some muscles at all, smiles are a dead rictus as my upper lip is immobile...

At least the pain seems to be fading - I haven't had to pop a Demerol in days, and I'm dialling back the Aleve now to try to spare my liver.  

So I'm back on the Toradol/Ketorolac for swelling.  Which is fine, except it lasts 4 hours.  So when you take youe last dose at 11pm or so, it's worn off by 3 am, and you wake up when your face startes to tingle.  

Also, it does't really work alone - it isn't a very good analgesic, so you need to take either a narcotic (Demerol) or an actual analgesic (Tylenol - APAP [acetaminophen]) with it.   The Tylenol I have are also 4 hour duration.

Problem is I want to sleep 8 hours.

So what I did last night was time my pills so that when it was time to go to bed, I was to take an NSAID, so I took Aleve, which lasts 8-10 hours (naproxen).   Worked.   I still woke up early, but it was only because my APAP had worn off (you can tell from how the face feels if it's the NSAID or the APAP.)

It seems they make an extended-release Tylenol.   So tonight it looks like I'll be okay, assuming they sell it in Canada....

Daytime - Toradol + APAP
Night - Naproxen + APAP

I'll ask the Doc if this is okay too, but it seems reasonable.

As of right now, the only part of my face that feels odd is upper lip (vermillion), lower lip (vermillion) and front of chin.  Most of the discomfort is my chin where they did the genioplasty.   Go figure.

Web page talking about how they do upper jaw stuff.  Asked Dr. T. if this was a fair description.

http://tinyurl.com/3z4youm

Makes me woozy reading it.

Five weeks to the day from surgery.    Some ups and downs, including my sudden bout of swelling this past week which led to pain and using up some of my dwindling stocks of assorted narcotics.   Kinda threw me for a loop, I hadn't had any real backwards steps for some time and when you do run into something like 'swelling could be an infection in your sinuses' you overreact.

Trying to get my life back on track... to gettting back on track to normal.    Last week was basically a wash, I think.  But the swelling's down again and I didn't need any surgery to fix an infected maxillary sinus, or huge amounts of antibiotics.  But it could have been and that's depressing.

Edit:  yay 3 am and wide awake after 2h sleep :P

So last evening someone mentioned they thought my face was somewhat swollen, so today, I tried icepacks and stuff during the day to keep it down, on top of the Aleve.

Around 2pm I called Tocchio's office and mentioned I had swelling - he is OoO so they called the other surgeon who worked on my operation (Dr. Tim Sands) and his office was 'GET IN HERE NOW'.

So I drove up to Woodbridge, to 4600 Highway 7 West, and the office of Dr. Sands.   We chat a while, and he thinks it's not what they feared, possible (Streptococcus) infection.

Seems when they cut my maxilla off, it cuts through the sinus cavities - and when they reattach, the sinus is not intact after, maybe full of blood, etc.   Eventually this heals - but in the mean time, blowing your nose (even gently as I do sometimes to clear a runny nose now) can trap air inside the sinus and this can cause swelling.   Ugh.

Also found out they somehow detatch and reattach the muscles when they move the jaws - so this is why I have limited motion of my jaw, most of the muscles are still conked out - they also did that to my nose muscles!   So this is why my nose is basically immobile - I can't even flare my nostrils.

On the good side the swelling's also maybe an indication the nerves are waking up and the increase in sensitivity and discomfort can result in swelling, and I do note some feeling is slooooowly creeping back into my face, even my upper lip.

Bad news:  some of the internal stitches will take 2 months or even LONGER to dissolve - the stitches under my nose are some sort of super-duper 6 month dissolving stitch (he mentioned the trade name but I missed it, sounded like Mucilex or something oddly wrong). 

Oh, and he confirmed the high tech mechanism they used to remove 2/3 of my lower turbinates was a pair of scissors.  Just snipped 'em off, bone and mucosa all, and let them bleed :P    Eesh.

I didn't know this but cartilage doesn't need blood supply.  Makes sense I guess.  It's why they leave the septum alone.  They did trim the base of the vomeral bone (the one what divides yer nasal cavity into left and right) but left the mucosa intact.

The most amusing thing was he mentioned at this stage about 80% of people who have this surgery don't think it was worth it.  I actually completed the sentence for him as '... don't think it was worth it.'   I knew instinctively what the statistic was about.   His point was 'wait to six months'.   Well it's Day 31, not Day 180, today, is the problem.

Sigh.

Hurray, we're into week 5.    Sleeping flat, whole 9 yards.   No more regular pain pills, just Aleve.

Why, for the last 3 nights then, have I been unable to sleep?   I just lie there with my eyes closed almost all night.

Yesterday and today, also, facial swelling is back.  

This.  Sucks.     I'm guessing it's from sleeping on my side, pillow pressure on face = swelling?    I'm going to use an ice pack this morning.

Work's picked up 110% as well - three new deal pursuits and I've had to talk a fair bit on the phone.   Probably also not helping.  

I'm thinking I'll try napping sitting in the Zero-G chair today and use an icepack to kill some swelling.   Can one get immune to Aleve??? I doubt it.

Annoying.

I'm at a loss to know what else could have been done, apart from the Liberal Party and NDP entering an electoral pact on a set of seats, but vote splitting in the GTA region gave the CPC enough seats they got to 168 (as of now, projected).

Well, it's as bad as I feared.  Elections always go worse than I expect and this one was no exception.   The Leader gets his majority, and I get a tax cut I didn't want.

I'd try to be happy for Layton as Opposition Leader but it isn't in me tonight.  I even liked Duceppe as a guy but he's out with the rest of the BQ.

Four weeks today since surgery and also federal election day here in Canuckistan.

I feel okay physically, but lately mentally the realization of the long-term nature of recovery has been getting to me.  A number of things have brought it home forcefully that the rapid improvements I've felt since April 4th are tapering off rapidly.   I still can't feel or move most of my upper lip, which makes smiling, drinking, eating, kissing, whatever, more awkward.   Chin's still numb, I can feel the knots of scar tissue like little clumps of density inside my cheeks.  

Taking this much Aleve can't be good for my liver - so I need to taper it off.

I want to get back to normal, and I've been kidding myself that it's a matter of days; it's not.   I've been pushing my recovery, like deluding myself I could make the Rush concert, or start doing work a week and a half after surgery, or dialling down the narcotics early.   Each time my body proved it knew more about me than I did.

So it's time to face the fact it could be weeks before I get more sensation back - I ate some fruit salad last night, at least I was able to bite through fruit, and even carefully chew peaches and pears (pears are REALLY dense, ow).

So it's a step, but not where I want to be.  And it's depressing me some.

Woke up this morning with clogged sinuses - had to take off my elastics to mouth breathe better - lay down all morning hoping they'd drain or something, no luck.   Took another pseudoephedrine just now - my nose feels dry inside but something's not working.   Took TWO demerol and I still feel headache, and now I'm faintly stoned.
This sucks.  I have things to do today, dammit.

Edit:  ended up idiotically sleeping all afternoon when I doped myself up and then ended up taking a 15m nap that lasted about 5 hours.   Well there went the entire day.

Basically the last few days I've been on Aleve, rarely popping a Demerol.  The Aleve lasts 9+ hours when you take it.  So this morning, I woke and really felt no pain, so I skipped the Aleve - by about 3pm I could feel some swelling though, so I took some.

Today's no-flash shot - oh yeah, I got a haircut.

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