Day 56 - 8 WEEKS!! - i can chew! (well.. kinda)

THE DAY HAS ARRIVED GUYS. as you can tell im pretty happy. best day ever. :)

i can chew. whoopee :)

my day started off with an early 7:30 am appt with my orthodontist. okay, i know i posted a little bit ago about the whole ordeal with rubber bands on the front of my mouth and the communication issues between my surgeon and ortho and their offices... blah. so today i finally got scheduled with my orthodontist. first they pulled out my lower wire. ouch! only to put the same one back in.... :\ did they really have to torture me that extra amount for no reason? they then switched my top wire, and i still have boxes with rubber bands... on the sides... just smaller boxes. i realized they weren't putting bands on the front... which is what my surgeon wanted... so i asked my ortho about this... cause i was concerned and confused. he told me that my front 2 teeth slightly were overlapping one another and so the band on the front would only worsen that. which i guess makes sense.. hopefully my surgeon is okay with this? anyway... so i go back to see my ortho in 4 weeks. all of the nurses/assistants there were all over me again asking how i was, even ones that i barely recognized! so weird (in a good way) and cool that they all know about me and such :) it was very nice of them.

after my early morning appt... (i have been suffering all day from not getting a ton of sleep last night :P better get on a better schedule again, oops!) i walked into my kitchen contemplating whether i wanted an egg or smoothie when suddenly it hit me. i could try something new. i immediately went for the cinnamon-sugar toast. well... i just microwaved it so it would be soft, so actually it would be bread not toast :P and then just put a ton of butter on it. and had my first attempt at chewing! after EIGHT WEEKS of nothing. wow. the first thing i would call it is.. weird. really weird. it feels like hmm.... like i am chewing a piece of rubber. because i feel like my jaw isnt strong enough to bite down completely on everything. just kinda squishes the food down enough to swallow. and it kinda gives me a headache. and my left jaw started clicking/popping which has me super worried..... i hope this goes away :( so i need to start practicing and reteaching myself how to chew! was i expecting it to be hard to chew? yes. was i successful at chewing? only a tiny bit. was it still amazing? YES:)

so, one of my friends texted me since she knew today was the big day. she came and picked me up and we adventured through target. i decided that what i wanted the most today, was potato chips. i figured they would dissolve easy enough to make them manageable to chew. so we picked up 2 bags and just sat and watched a movie and netflix together all afternoon. it was pretty great. :) i basically ate potato chips for both lunch and dinner and am not even ashamed to admit it! ill go back to eating "healthy" stuff tomorrow... today was a special day.

In regards to the whole chewing thing, itll take a while to get anywhere near normal. Today, i started to get sores underneath my top lip and cheeks from rubbing against my braces... whether this is from talking a lot, or the ortho adjustment this morning, or chewing, i have no clue. but it makes it hurt to talk! so hopefuly those heal up quickly. i may be wearing wax tomorrow.

also... i wanted to complain quickly about the numbness still around my incision areas or areas in the back of my mouth still being numb, because now that i can chew, i got food stuck in all sorts of places in my mouth and didnt notice for a while! so annoying... don't know the best way to clean that out besides just brushing my teeth (since im not allowed to use my water pick yet). so ill just be brushing my teeth a lot for a while...

so! since this is a big "8 week" post... ill write more about how i am feeling/doing overall

sleep - i can now sleep on my face without pain, so yay for sleeping curled up in a ball:)

energy - normal! i havent exercised yet mostly because it feels weird on my face to run and/or jump... the pain is slowly going down. but i feel like it would be kinda painful for me. i could tough it out if necessary though!

numbness
so this is getting harder and harder to explain. ill start off by saying that i can "feel" everywhere i touch except for my gums on my top teeth. which is pretty great. now.. i have a TON of partial numbness though. the inside of my mouth has the most numbness. areas around the incisions are pretty numb. hmm, so are the insides of my cheeks. my left cheek is way more numb than my right though which is weird. the areas on either side of nose are the most numb on the outside of my face. but idk, it is really hard to tell what is numb and what isnt and what is tingly, idk! just all runs together. ill include in this part this my face is still stiff. smiling is still a tad awkward. and yeah

random stuff now... so... im still working on getting to open my mouth wider, im slowly making progress! im at about 28 mm, and gotta get to 35 mm. hopefully i can! cause it makes singing easier when i can actually open my mouth.

my nose still is annoying... pretty sure i have a deviated septum now :\ so i can almost never breathe out of the left side of my nose... but idk. we'll see what happens in the future...

i am still not taking any medicine for pain, even though sometimes i have it, it isn't bad enough to take medicine normally. yay for that :) i have a lot of headaches though... and just random aches. but oh well. gets better by the day still.

swelling is pretty much gone. some people say they notice it, some don't. not sure what to believe, i feel kinda puffy, but i think this is mostly just from the remaining numbness and stiffness.

anyway, i think i got enough into this post... overall things are great :) hope all is great with anyone still reading this. a big thanks if you are :) this blog has been amazing. much love.

-Katie:)