5.5 Weeks: Back to Life!

It's been 42 days since my surgery.  I still feel very aware of the fact that I recently had major surgery because I can still "feel" my face healing, but I'm otherwise feeling great.  My energy is definitely back, and I think it has to do with how much I've been eating. 

I was cleared for soft/mushy foods at week 3, and I really went at it.  I found that I was able to "eat" so many different kinds of foods without really much of a problem, and even caught myself chewing a few times.  After a while of accidentally chewing down on food, and not really feeling any pain or discomfort, I kind've "graduated" myself into a soft CHEW diet after week 4.  I also broke my vegan streak in order to have some Cuban beef filled potato balls from Porto's.  They barely needed chewing.  It was a melt in your mouth and swallow kind've meal.  I've also had fish tacos (with very mushy cut up tortilla), grilled (VERY soft) veggies, pasta, potatoes, beans, rice, and my favorite, avocados.  I told my Doctor all of this at my appointment yesterday, and she wasn't exactly thrilled.  But, after that, she looked in my mouth, asked me to open, and was shocked at how wide I could open.  I'm able to fit 2 fingers in without me pulling my jaws apart, but when I use my hands to pull them apart for exercises I can get them to open wide enough for room for 3.  She asked if I was still doing weekly acupuncture, and I am, and she's wondering (like I am) if that's helping my cheek muscles along, thus allowing me to open so wide. 

My midlines are still nice and straight, and I am now allowed to wear my bands only at night to sleep.  This is a great relief because the bands make my teeth soooo sensitive, and now that they're not banded all the time, I can feel their sensitivity calming down a bit.  It's still weird that I can't feel my top gums, but my doc told me that I could go as long as a year without feeling them.  Hmmm... I hear people get used to it, so we'll see.  However, I am getting feeling back on that small portion of my top lip.  It's probably at 25-30% right now.  My doc seemed pretty pleased that I had 100% feeling everywhere else.  I certainly am too, but I still wish I could feel my gums even a little.

I still have swelling on both sides of my nose, my upper lip, and chin area.  My cheeks also remain a little swollen, but not too much any more.  I've gone out a couple times to see a couple of friends, and they saw the difference right away.  They think I look pretty different and stared at my mouth a lot while I talked--- they were fascinated.  They didn't see the swelling that I do, but I know it's there.  I can feel it, AND I know what my face looks like when it's not swollen.  My doctor agrees that I'm still swollen in all the same places I stated earlier. 

The only pain I've been getting recently are muscle aches in my right cheeks and up onto my head--- like all the way at the top of my head on the right side.  They're not headaches in the traditional sense.  I can actually feel that what hurts are the muscles on my skull and not my brain.  I think this is from all the stretching and "soft chewing" I was allowing myself.  Sometimes, the pain is stronger than tolerable so I take a couple Ibuprofen and it calms down.

Finally, today was the day that I was supposed to return to work, but there's been a change of plans.  Last week, during my week 4 of recovery, I got called in for a final interview in what had been a long application process for an amazing job opportunity that I had been coveting.  And on Friday of last week, I was informed the job was mine!  In case you're wondering, I kept my bands off for the interview, and just hoped that they wouldn't notice anything "off" about me, and I don't think that they did.  I decided that the right thing to do would be to go into the office early on Monday to give my boss a face to face resignation (after all, they had been so kind to give me 6 weeks off for recovery!! I didn't have that much vacation or sick time).  I now have an extra 2 weeks to add to my at-home recovery since I don't start the new job for another couple of weeks.  I'm soooo glad that I'll have had 2 months of recovery time before having to start this new adventure. I already feel pretty great lately, I can only imagine how much stronger I'll feel almost 9 weeks into recovery. 

Speaking of strength, I forgot to mention that my Doc also cleared me for exercise!  She asked me to take it easy at first, yoga, LIGHT jogging, but that if I felt like I could handle it, I could gradually increase the intensity.  Believe it or not, I actually really look forward to working out again.  I was feeling so good from all the working out before surgery, that I actually miss it.  Weird to say, weirder to actually mean it.  ;) 

Pictures/Video coming soon!