1.16.2017

Post-Surgery

There are some things that I saved for later to write about, now is the time. In October I got all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed and I will finally talk about what happened post surgery. You can see my pre-surgery post here.

First of all, the surgery was successful. I woke up from the anesthesia crying. During the surgery, I was dreaming that the surgery was happening as if I was awake for it. This was the first indication that strong medication gives me horrible dreams. As I was waking up the girl in the room with me was telling me that everything went fine. I was asking questions and crying and as she gave me more information I realized that it was all just a dream but I couldn't shake the emotions or tears. They took me out to a different room where my dad was waiting for me. I had to make my next appointment, as I tried my hardest to be lucid. She gave me after care directions that I quickly forgot and hoped my dad was retaining it better than I was. We were free to go and my dad had to help me walk to the car as walking was very difficult for me. He then dropped me off at home where my mom was waiting for me. My dad was filling her in with the information but I kept butting into the conversation because I felt like he wasn't giving the full details. He was laughing at me because I was still coming down from the anesthesia which made me seem like I was drunk. He then left to drop of my prescriptions at the pharmacy. While my mom was getting ice packs and food prepared for me, I filmed myself before the effects wore off.

The day of and after the surgery, I had to keep gauze in my mouth, which helped the pain and made it funny to talk. During those days the pain wasn't so bad. I had antibiotics and pain meds. One makes you constipated and the other gives you diarrhea. Lets just say I didn't poop for a week, which was fine by me until my stomach started to hurt, due to lack of movement. Once I finished the antibiotics, I had diarrhea for a few days, which wasn't fun. My surgery was on a Wednesday and I only took the rest of the week off, planning to go back to work the following Monday. My mom stayed at my place until Sunday and I ended up taking Monday off, although I really should of took Tuesday off too. Because of my tricky nerve situation and age, it took a little longer to heal. My face gradually swelled and bruised. It was very difficult for me to smile, laugh, and to bend over, causing blood and gravity into my cheeks causing pain.



I had an appointment a week later to check how things were healing. All but one socket was healing pretty good. The stitches dissolved and only left one gaping hole where the only tooth had erupted a couple years prior. At this very moment, that hole is almost nearly closed, but still healing. I also had numbness on the left side of my lower lip and chin after surgery. The numbness in my lip went away after the first day or so but the numbness stayed in my chin for about a few weeks and finally went away before I even noticed it. I was very thankful for that and it proved my skilled surgeon was right and very trusting. I just had my final appointment this afternoon just to check everything, he said everything looks great and that little hole I still have will completely heal soon. To allow for the healing process, I had practically quit smoking hookah. I went from smoking a couple times a week to only about once or twice a month. Because I have limited it so much, I have less of a desire to smoke, which is wonderful.

Now that I got the technical stuff out of the way, I want to describe my symptoms and behaviors. As I said, I was taking pain meds, prescription strength ibuprofen and hydrocodone. I've taken strong ibuprofen before and possibly took a lower dose of hydrocodone a couple times too when I had a spider bite some years ago, but no symptoms from that. This time, however, I felt incredibly uncomfortable due to the hydrocodone. I took it as prescribe the first day and while the pain wasn't so bad then, I did get twitchy and itchy especially when I would try to take naps. Whenever I did nap, it gave me really annoying and sometimes bad dreams. My dreams would just be furthering whatever thoughts were jumping around in my mind. They gave the illusion of me still being awake and would change scenes every time my thought process changed. It made it hard to sleep that first night. My mom and I decided that I would only take that during the day time and when I was ready for bed, I would just take the ibuprofen so that it wouldn't affect my sleep. This was a brilliant plan and helped me tremendously. My naps were still irritating and I would wake up in a panic and a bad mood. My poor mother dealt with my moodiness quite well and knew when to leave me be for a little bit until it wore off. She was great and I'm really thankful she was there. I was lucid for the most part but a little forgetful. Inspired by a friend who underwent surgery from a shattered elbow, her husband kept a written timetable for all her medications and that's exactly what we did which was vital.

Despite my worries, I was actually quite hungry during recovery, but I hardly craved the food that I was able to eat. It didn't occur to me that before my surgery, I should have weened myself off of crunchy foods, which is probably my biggest vice. Everything I wanted to eat was hard and crunchy. I did cheat and ordered food from UberEats that I probably wasn't quite ready for. While I never usually eat macaroni and cheese, I ate a lot of that. I had shakes every morning and stayed away from straws. The first night I ordered out for food, I got pho, which was good but very exhausting to eat and probably undid some of my stitches. I still have a ton of pudding, mac 'n' cheese, and applesauce leftover. Whenever I did eat crunchy foods, I just sucked on them a little to make them soft before chewing. All in all, eating was pretty comical.

Everyday, we assessed my pain, and I tried to space out and lower my dosage whenever I felt necessary because I knew I had to go back to work soon. I stayed away from alcohol and smoking. It was strange to sit on the couch and not have to work. Once I did go back to work, I realized more how painful it was to talk. I was still working at the school. Raising my voice, smiling, and laughing was very difficult and my jaw would ache most of the time. I had to use a little bit of makeup to cover the bruising on my jaw and my cheeks were still a little puffy. Everybody was happy I was back at work, but I wasn't. At this point I had the current week and one more week until my last day there, which made it harder and easier at the same time.

Another big thing I noticed was my mental capacity, which my dad believes has a lot to do with the anesthesia. I don't doubt that, I was feeling weird ever since. While recovering at home, I didn't have to use my brain so much, but once I was at work, I could see the evidence. I was not nearly as lucid as I usually am. I was kind of dumb, forgetful and scatterbrained. Thankfully, my coworkers and I just found it kind of funny. But it was another sign I wasn't quite ready to jump back into work so soon.

All in all, I'm very happy that I did that when I did it. It's done and over with, with a small price tag and no long term symptoms or damage. In fact, I no longer have pain in my mouth at all. I know now that a lot of what I experienced but mislabeled was pain from my wisdom teeth coming in. Now I have no worries and just have to keep up on regular cleanings and flossing.

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