I slept with a bikini tied around my head. Day 25.

Yes, that's right. One of the downfalls of lost facial movement is that my eyelids don't seal quite tight enough (they are still "closed" though...I don't look like a creepy person), and I have a fan blowing on me all night so they get rather dry. I have a lovely silk sleep mask that I wear all the time (I like to sleep in darkness), and it has been solving my dry eye problem wonderfully, but 3 nights ago it disappeared. No sign of it anywhere. So perplexing since I would never take it out of bed. Wednesday night I solved the problem by velcroing the long thing that holds my ice pack around my face, but then I realized I wanted it to do its job, namely- hold ice packs. So then my mom, out of sheer brilliance, grabbed one of my bathing suit tops as a solution. And I gotta say, it worked like a charm. I could tie it loose enough that it wouldn't cut into my healing battle wounds, and if I wanted to be really ambitious I could put my nose through the mid-chest key hole (this was impractical though). I know how silly I looked, but dry eyes are so annoying that it was totally worth it. This morning though, my mom and Elizabeth came in and decided that I looked like a fly. After a verse or two of "Shoo fly, don't bother me", Elizabeth remembered that she, too, has a sleep mask that she's offered to lend me til mine shows up. Problem solved, and now I won't be woken up to songs likening me to an insect. Resemblance? Nah.

To be honest, this whole bedridden thing is getting old. The honeymoon phase of lounging all day is wearing off. I just tried to drink some hot chocolate and it spilled all down my face and onto my pillow. Ugh. I am getting better at eating, though. For the first couple weeks, all I could eat was soup and smoothies (ewww...so over smoothies) via one of my fabulous 60mL syringes (see photo). Now, I can take off my elastics and eat, albeit painfully, anything that I don't have to chew: stuff like mashed potatoes, rice with goat cheese, and spaghetti cut up reeeeeally really small. Carbo-loading yes, but it's certainly more exciting than all the various soups I've been having. I have lost about 15 lbs so far, which I credit to the syringe diet. I should patent that. Who needs the gym? Just have jaw surgery. Or voluntarily eat everything out of a syringe. Forever.

Apparently I am healing very well, but I wish the swelling would disappear! I feel like I've plateaued in that department for the time being. I have to keep being reminded of the extent and severity of what I had done, and that I should obviously not expect to be fully recovered by now. I mean, I sleep more than 12 hours a day! But I just want to eat sushi or a hamburger, go swimming, walk farther than up the street without getting tired, sit on a patio and have a beer etc.... In due time I suppose, but a girl can dream. I'm going to try to continue to decrease my pain meds and keep going with my jaw exercises and hope that I'm good to go for September. I'm currently signed up to be a volunteer during orientation week, and I really don't want to have to cancel that! My jaw exercises, by the way, are very exciting: open and close my mouth 100 times a day. I'm up to 1.5 fingers wide, which doesn't look like a lot, but I've made a lot of progress considering on day 10 when my surgeon cut off my elastics my jaw just fell right open because my muscles were so out of practice. Now THAT hurt. It still hurts to exercise but it's getting better...only up from here! This weekend kind of sucks because it's the long weekend, and instead of being at Veld, Osheaga, Caribana or my old roommate Ellen's annual Barn Dance, I am in bed. Thank goodness for the olympics!! If there's going to be a summer where you have to recover from something for this long, pick an olympic summer. Very well planned on my part ;)

All whining aside, I'm sure I am slowly getting better. The pain is pretty good, it's just the medication that wipes me out. Slowly getting off those bad boys. Thanks again to all the people that haven't forgotten about me yet! So amazing how much love is still coming my way. It really is nice to have so many people in your corner. :)

Here is a picture of me today, on day 25. I don't see a huge change. Scars are hardly noticeable though, eh?

Day 25!

Also as a last note- I just wanted to clarify that I had nothing done to my nose! A few people were asking after they saw my comparison photo. It does look very different, but that just goes to show how much changing the jaw can change the proportions of the face. And my upper lip is still quite swollen so that could explain it too. Unless of course I did have a nose job under the knife and no one told me! HA can you imagine?? Anyway, time for a movie!

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