Recovery

Not gonna lie, this recovery has been a bit brutal at times. The bruising and swelling has been crazy! My face was so swollen I couldn't wear my glasses or contacts and I couldn't breathe through my nose. Also, my neck, back, and chest were so swollen that I couldn't breath at ALL, and I had to run to last-minute emergency doctors appointments to figure out how to keep me from passing out all day because of it. I couldn't even take a step without almost passing out so I had to be escorted around in a wheelchair all day. Then there's the fact that my mouth has so many sores from sticking the pesky little syringe/straw thing through my swollen cheeks that I hate to even eat or drink. The pain was borderline unbearable for a while and not even my strongest pain killers were doing the trick! Oh, and I've lost a lot of weight (not that you can tell because I'm so swollen) and taking more than 10 steps at a time makes me feel like I ran a marathon and it completely wipes me out for a few solid hours.

That all being said, I finally feel like today is the first actual day of significant improvement, and it feels good (relatively speaking)! The swelling and bruising is down a bit, the drugs are finally working and helping to manage pain, and I am hoping that my doctor will open my jaw a little bit tomorrow morning!

Also, being so weak and in so much pain, Ryan has had to do EVERYTHING this week. He's fed me, kept up with all of my medicine schedules, done laundry, kept the apartment super clean, and basically waited on me hand and foot. While I like to typically be a little more independent than that, I had no option. So this morning, when Ryan had to go to a conference up in Ogden, I was worried about being able to handle my medicine, ice packs, and everything in general. I am happy to report that it was successful, but I think I was just really blessed that my first major "improvement" day was today and not tomorrow or a few days later... and also really blessed to have such a great husband to drop everything he wanted/needed to do to help me.

Here's a nice glamour shot of my swollen face...and neck, and back... sans the "Jaw Bra" (that's the actual name of it) and sans a shower for a few days. I look so ugly it's almost funny in these pics. (**side note:I'm not mad in every picture, it's just that my entire face is numb and tingly so I can't make any expressions.**)

And when the swelling went down a bit, the pretty bruising revealed itself. The bruises got way ugly all the way down to my chest (but it wasn't an appropriate picture to take so this will have to do).

Here's what I started out with, but since I got home we have added chocolate milk, OJ, Cran-raspberry juice, beef broth, veggie broth, and tomato soup to the mix. Ryan got that little dry-erase board so that I could communicate with him... which came in handy!

This is how I roll...

So that's that! Not much more to say, but I definitely feel on the up and up now and hope that it continues that way.