Day 9 – Back to MaxFax

Today was the day of my first post-operative check-up with the surgical team. To mark the occasion, here are some photos of me looking clean(ish)-shaven and wearing something other than pyjamas.

Like drinking coffee, shaving is normally a hazardous activity for me  at the best of times – even if I do leave some stubble – nevermind when the face is still tender, swollen and a bit numb. So please forgive the unkemptness.

James (the Dingle¹, not the cat) drove us to Dingletown for the appointment.

The hospital was in maximum-efficiency mode as I the doctor called me through EARLY. #BigUpTheNHS. The surgeon was in Walsall today (where I had come from), so I saw one of the juniors.

The operation was a success. The mouth is healing very well. I should regain all feeling that I lost – even the nerve that was deemed to have most likely been frayed is starting to recover function. So good news.

The X-rays looked pretty cool. I forgot to ask for them to be emailed to me so I can post them here, but I will do next time. I have two titanium plates in the bottom jaw, and three in the top.

I'm always very organised when I see a doctor myself or go with someone else, and always prepare a list of questions to ask.

Do I need to do jaw exercises? Graham's blog and the global support group I'm in suggest that I may.
Not yet. If range of motion is still limited a few weeks, then maybe.

When is it safe to blow my nose or sneeze?
Two to three weeks.

What about the stitches?
They will dissolve by themselves. I should start brushing them away after the weekend. Ouch.

When can I do cardio, weights, and sports?
There is no surgical reason why I can't do any now. My face isn't going to fall apart if I get hit by a disc. The issue is fitness. I'll be very unfit for another two weeks as my body diverts much of its attention and blood to healing my broken jaws.

Tomorrow morning I have my orthodontic post-op check-up. Once again this is a shining example of the recent outbreak of efficiency within the NHS in the Black Country. I was meant to be having it on Friday with the locum from London, but the secretary phoned me today and said that my normal orthodontist will be able to see me tomorrow. Bonus.

From a maxfax point of view, the bite is good enough. We'll get an idea tomorrow as to what degree of perfection orthodontics will be able to achieve.

Then it's back to work tomorrow. I no longer have to apply ice to my face to ease the swelling, so there's no reason why I can't work. Ten days off is a big difference compared to the three months I was initially told I'd need.

Luckily I can work virtually from the mother's place, so I don't need to rush straight back to London. Although I will be back in the office on Monday, much to the mother's disappointment.

I haven't broke the news to James yet².

Today's menu was SLICED pear – complete with skin – for breakfast³; tomato with a hint of basil soup, and a slice of bread for lunch; and sausage and mash for tea..

I forgot to take a photo of lunch, but I'm sure most readers will be able to visualise a bowl of soup.

 

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1. "Dingle" is the taxonym for supporters of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club. Despite being a highly skilled mathematician, and thus very itelligent, James supports Wolves. The hospital is in Wolverhampton.

2. The cat, not the Dingle.

3. Partying hard today...

Day 8 – Mastication, Mastication, Mastication

First of all, apologies for the delay. When I logged into my work computer to check my sick note had gone through fine, I saw there were some urgent emails. Oh the irony...

Also, James refused to let me move for much of the day.

So, I'm writing this on the morning of Day 9, but let's imagine it is Day 8 for now¹. I would have waited until the end of Day 9 and done a double post, but Day 8 was so monumental it deserved its own post.

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On Day 7, I said how I was able to eat without a mirror, and whistle for the first time in my life. You may have noticed from the photo of the chicken casserole that the meal wasn't very liquidised. Today I went a step further.

I chewed.

The main problem that the orthodontics and maxfax were meant to solve was my inability to chew. For my whole life, the only biting surfaces I have had in my entire mouth have been at the very back on the left. This has now changed. It is an awesome feeling to be able to do something so simple, so essential for daily life, and which most people have never given a second thought about. Obviously, it's nowhere near as terrific as I imagine restoration of sight or reversal of paralysis would be. But the magical moment isn't too different from the sudden ray of light that appears when a depression first begins to lift.

I cannot believe that at only Day 8, I am able to do these things. One of the soundtracks to my life is The Streets – It Was Supposed To Be So Easy, because anything involving me normally involves some kind of disaster.

This Jaw-Breaking has so far been the opposite².

Today's menu was forked pear for breakfast3, carrot and cumin soup that my aunt brought round and the rest of Day 7's chicken casserole.

Hopefully the mother will start making this too. It tastes beautiful, and she needs to get some use out of the blender.

Yes, this is an enormous portion. The mother still hasn't adjusted to the fact that her 6'2" and 6'5" sons left home nearly two decades ago. I said I wouldn't be able to eat it and was planning on leaving at least half. But found chewing to be so enjoyable that I somehow managed to finish the lot. Plus, I don't like waste.

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1. So when I say "today", I mean Tuesday 15th March 2016. Which is actually yesterday as I type.

2. Touch wood.

3. But you knew that already.

Day 7 – Drugs

Detox is over.

Yesterday, I started drinking from a glass again. Today, I thought I'd be very ambitious and attempt a feat which is incredibly dangerous for me even when I do not have a swollen and numb face.

I decided to drink coffee.

It tasted beautiful and I didn't spill a drop.

When the swelling goes down, being able to safely drink coffee without some of it pouring out of an oversized bottom jaw will be one of the main benefits of the surgery.

So, I have restarted caffeine. But today I gave up a different drug. I had the last of my course of antibiotics, so hopefully I won't be experiencing the banana-flavoured medicine for a long time. That's not to say I didn't like the co-amoxyclav – I just have a slightly clearer conscience now that I am no longer contributing to the antibiotic-resistance apocalypse.

I've joined a global support group for people who have had or are going to have their jaws broken. Makes me realise that the Internet is a pretty cool thing¹.

One piece of advice that I had heard about before surgery but deliberately chose to ignore was to drink prune juice from day one. I normally have the opposite problem, so prunes weren't a priority. I kind of regret that now².

At least the mother has given up on her evil plot to spike my food with laxatives.

A cool piece of advice that I've had is that whistling helps to break the scar tissue up. I managed to whistle today for the first time in my life that I can remember. I've always been able to make some sort of whistling noise by whistling inwards (sucking as opposed to blowing), but it;s nice to be able to do it properly.

I realised this morning why my gums hurt when I brush me teeth, and why there can be a lot of blood.

You may be able to make out the vertical stitches going down around my top teeth, and the horizontal line cut all along my upper jaw at the very top of the gums. Fingers crossed they will dissolve. I wouldn't fancy a trip to Wolverhampton to have these stitches pulled out....

Today was also the first time I've ever had to submit a doctor's note for time off. That was quite sad. Even though I am making huge progress, I'm still nowhere near ready for work with general lethargy, inability to speak properly, and need to spend several hours a day with ice attached to my face to ease the swelling.

Although if I hear the Cher song from the Amazon Prime advert one more time, I may end up running to Birmingham and jumping on the first Pendolino back to London³.

 

I really liked the advert at first.It definitely raised Amazon Prime's Brand Awareness with me. But, given that it seems to be on at least once in every single commercial break, its Net Promoter Score has taken a tumble for me over the last couple of days⁴.

Today's menu was forked pear for breakfast (again), and chicken casserole for tea. And three cuppas. I managed to eat both meals without the aid of a mirror, which was nice.

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1. Interestingly, this was the gist of today's CIMA studies

2. If the boss' boss is reading this, #sorrynotsorry. 

3. This has come on twice while I have been writing this post.

4. If you don't work in Marketing, then this sentence will mean nothing to you.

Day 6 – Baby Steps

I forgot to say yesterday that I was feeling a bit gruesome and decided to watch this. It's a YouTube video of the kind of operation I had. Mine wasn't quite as dramatic: all my work was done from inside my mouth; and my chin and nose were left alone. But it's still pretty accurate. The moment at 2:55 when the top jaw is removed is pretty magical.

On to less morbid things...

As today was Sunday, it was a CIMA day. It's nice to be back to doing something vaguely normal and productive. Even I do have to wear a towel round my face to stop me from dribbling on my trial balances.

Other baby steps I taken today included drinking a pint from a pint glass. Unfortunately, it wasn't a pint of beer, but I'm glad to be saying goodbye to the syringe. I'm also talking a lot more now and am able to have conversations in English as opposed to grunts. Even the cat understood when I was calling him in earlier.

One thing on Graham's blog that I never really paid much attention to was the fact that I should expect to be able to breathe through my nose better after surgery. Apparently this is because having a ridiculously big bottom jaw causes the mouth to hang open, and thus mouth-breathing. This supposedly deprives the nose of air to smell. It is true. My sense of smell has been so acute over the last couple of days. The true olfactory delights of the world have been revealed to me. The mother cooked a spag bol last night and the house has stunk of basil since. I never expected to be able to smell basil so acutely, but it really is a minor miracle.

Either that, or my nose has found Basil, and I'm in line for £20k from Scotland Yard.

My sister-in-law came round with my two youngest nieces. They're chicken-poxed up, but they made me a "Get Well" badge.

Speaking of baby steps, I was worried that the youngest niece (just had her first birthday) would be terrified of my enormous face and weird voice. I needn't have been. She toddled over to me, taking a couple of steps without holding the furniture. It turns out those were her first steps! Cute.

Today's menu was forked pear for breakfast, then cottage pie for tea. 

As you can see, the liquid diet has largely died a death. So probably so have my ambitions of extreme weight loss during my convalescence.

Day 5 – Student life

Good news: My nerves aren't completely destroyed.

Bad news: I discovered this when trying to get to sleep last night when my teeth suddenly exploded in a burst of aching agony. The type of pain you get the very first time you have your braces tightened¹. Not good. Thank god for co-codamol.

I am now able to drink using a sports cap bottle. This is quite useful as it saves having to decant drinks into smaller containers in order to use the syringe. It's also a lot faster. I never thought I would find a genuine use for my ability to "open the gullet" other than to down a pint of beer in sub-4 seconds, but it is a crucial skill when you can only drink like a penguin.

I managed to do a bit of studying for my CIMA today. I say "managed" – I spent most the morning catching up on sleep from my night of pain, then the rugby was on. I wrote yesterday about things that are happening at my old uni; I should really let go of student life as Six Nations rugby always used to impede studying in my student days.

The big brother came round today with my niece. I said that he can already tell the difference in my face and that I look at lot better than before the op.

I think that was an insult.

Today's menu was sausage and egg breakfast, then a spag bol tea. Yum.

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1. I don't actually know what the pain is like when braces are first tightened. I was the last of my crew at school to get braces, so had heard all the horror stories and maxed-out on co-codamol just before my first few orthodontic appointments.

Day 4 – Déjà vu

Facebook reminds me of this from five years ago:

This was from when I had a misfortune with my fingers and was keeping a photo diary. If you really want to see, here's the link, although I do not recommend it. I'm just glad that my body's healing processes continue to bring such joy to so many people.

Anyway, back to the face...

As was probably quite obvious given the tone of my previous two posts, the last couple of days had been pretty miserable. James (my cat) hadn't even ventured into the bedroom to visit me, so I must've been pretty awful company – he's normally attached to me like a koala,

Me and James

Today was an improvement. My head finally feels as if it has stopped inflating like Aunt Marge. James (a human mate, not a cat) came round with some ice. We have been having a minor ice-crisis as the freezer has for some reason been refusing to freeze ice-packs. I can only assume that it supports the junior doctors.

Another big milestone is that I can now hold mouthwash in my mouth with my face held horizontally. This may seem like a major feat in contortion – it's not. I am describing using mouthwash like a normal human being. Since the operation, this has been how I have been washing my mouth:

1. Look up at the ceiling
2. Open mouth wide
3. Pour mouthwash into mouth
4. Swill mouthwash around mouth by shaking head like a penguin attempting to swallow a fish whole
5. Still looking at the sky, attempt a duckface
6. Pinch lips together tightly
7. Swill mouthwash around front of mouth
8. Open mouth and drain..

I can close my mouth!

Gladly, the swelling of my lips has reduced sufficiently that I can now hold mouthwash in my mouth. I'm still drinking through a syringe, but I have managed to take a couple of sips from a glass. When I told the mother of this miraculous development, she thought I was trying to say that I had found her misplaced glasses. But I'm not quite capable of such great miracles.

Given the reduced swelling, I was able to eat today. Breakfast consisted of blended sausage. Because it is Friday, tea was a blended version of my famous salmon, pasta, veg and cheese sauce dish from my student days

Sausage

Salmon

Jelly and cream

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By the way, if anyone needs a laugh, this was my source of entertainment last night. The latest controversy to inflict my old uni.

Day 3 – More Swelling

I didn't see how it was possible, but I was expecting it. My head has indeed, unimpeded by ibuprofen, managed to swell to an unprecedented size. It has actually grown bigger than it grows when I get some nice feedback at work, or a job offer. In all seriousness, though, I reckon my head is at least quadruple the size it was when I left London on Saturday. It also weighs a ton. I wouldn't be surprised if I have actually put on a few pounds over the last few days, despite being on a liquid diet.

Today's swelling has reached such a level that I am now struggling to take on any fluids, even with a syringe. Mother is having to squirt Lucasade Sport through the small gap that there is between my swollen lips.

It's getting hot in here

The worst thing about this situation at the moment is, bizarrely, that I am not in pain. If I was in pain, it'd be a bit easier to deal with because the whole situation would be more coherent and make more sense. My faculties are all there. Or at least as much as they have always been. I've spent the day watching science and history documentaries and the commentaries on Dan Jarvis' speech. Essentially, I am fine. I am just laid in bed because I have a fat face. And that is hard for me to get my head around.

Food today has been pretty meagre. I just had a couple of chocolate mousses. I couldn't face having to attempt to clean the remnants of another meal out of my mouth today.

Anyway, I must be off. Tonight is the biggest night of the year at my alma mater, and I'm gutted I'm not there, so I'm heading over to the liveblog to see who will be crowned (or not) General Secretary of LSE Students' Union.

The disaster that has been this year's election campaign has made me feel slightly better about my currently-oversized head.