Day 24

3 weeks! It's been over 3 weeks since surgery. I accidentally didn't post anything on Monday, which was officially 3 weeks. It just completely slipped my mind. My brother just joined the military, and he's leaving for basic training on Monday. So, I've been spending most of my free time hanging out with him. Aside from that I've become such a hermit lately. Every time I try to go out I wind up cutting it short and going home early. My face is just completely annoying lately. When I go out the cold and wind just really irritate my skin. It gets all red and itchy and gross. The medicine that Dr. L gave me has helped some, but I still have tons of break outs all over my face. I'm so ready for them to clear up. They are by far my biggest annoyance right now.

I went out to eat today for the first time since surgery. My mom really wanted to take my brother out so I went even though I was pretty nervous about it. Its not just that I wasn't sure what I could find to eat (I've been able to improvise pretty well so far)..it was more that my eating isn't super attractive these days. That doesn't bother me at home. I just keep a towel with me and as long as I can get the food down without hurting my jaw, I'm good. In public though no one knows that I just had jaw surgery and that is why my speech sounds wierd and food occasionally falls out of my mouth. I decided that hanging out with my brother was more important than my vanity though..so I decided to just have a sense of humor about my situation, and if I make a mess then it is what it is. It turned out that it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We decided to go to a bbq place so I could get some kind of pulled meat. My mom explained my situation to the waitress and she was happy to ask the cook to cut up my chicken really fine so that I could eat it. I also had some mac and cheese and a baked potato. It was sooo good! It was all also really easy to eat. It was so nice to be able to sit in a restaurant and eat semi-normally. I didn't stress about how silly I probably looked eating. I just enjoyed the good food and time with my family. It was nice :)

I've got less than a week now until this splint comes out. At first I was worried about them taking the splint out early, but now I'm so glad because every day this thing annoys me more. I'm also wanting to talk to Dr. L about possibly doing facial exercises to get some of this stiffness/tightness out of my face. More than anything I'm hoping he approves me to expand my diet a little more. I feel ready to start eating more normally. I'm getting pretty tired of pasta. I'm actually making a mental list of all the foods I want to eat once I'm allowed to eat normally again.

Anyway..I'm going to try to post pictures again soon. I've been taking them every few days, but I haven't been posting because my internet is awful. I'm going to try to upload all of them in the next few days though!