16 days post-op

[Guest guest]

Wow, 16 days already.

To the casual observer I look quite normal, if a little

expressionless. I'm sure the facial muscle tone will come back with

time, so I'm not worried about that. And I got the go-ahead to begin

chewing very very soft stuff. It's a pleasure to eat very small

pieces of tofu, very soft fruits (like banana or kiwi), baked beans,

or pasta. Mushy stuff like tuna salad or egg salad is nice too. I'm

still liquifying green salad, meat, most fruits and vegetables, and

bread, though.

The surgeon has given me the go-ahead to sleep flat, use normal

toothpaste instead of the hated salt water-peroxide combo, lift

stuff around the house, lift light weights (up to 5 lbs per side for

now), and even lift my 30-lb daughter (that was a surprise, but

still--yay!). So my life is almost normal now.

I only lost 5 lbs post-surgery and then turned around and gained

them right back again (right around the time I started blending

sandwiches for lunch and eating blended versions of what everyone

else was eating for dinner), so the surgeon says that I no longer

have to eat extra calories/protein. (So I guess it's back to dieting

for me, trying to lose those 5 pounds again the normal way. Oh well,

it was nice while it lasted...)

He wants me to wait until Monday and then I can start non-impact

cardio exercise (swimming or using an elliptical machine). He warned

me not to expect my previous levels of strength or endurance-- " You

lose it twice as fast as you gain it, " he said. Sigh. Well, we'll

see how it goes.

My mother and grandmother leave Saturday morning and I am really

nervous that things are going to be especially tiring this weekend

without having them around to take my daughter off my hands when I

get busy or tired. I've been so sheltered these past few weeks,

because they've been doing the laundry, washing the dishes, cooking

the meals, handling my daughter's morning and bedtime routines. For

example, I wake up and she's washed, dressed, and fed already. Then

I have my morning protein shake with her, and then Mom & Grandmom

take her to preschool. It's been wonderful and I'm really sad to see

it come to an end.

I sort of feel like I may have been pretty foolish to tell the

family that I'm free to lift stuff around the house. I should have

told my husband " Oh, no, I still can't lift the teakettle or the

laundry or Leah, so you'll have to do all the cooking & washing &

bathing & disciplining & ... " Me & my big mouth, eh?

But I wouldn't have felt right about that. My dear husband is having

a terrible time with his sleep apnea, plus the ortho just put active

springs on his braces to close the spaces from the teeth he had

extracted a few months ago. (The rubberbands were closing one side

but not the other, so after two months of pain and minimal movement,

now he's starting a new course of more pain but more movement. Oh

well, the things we go through to get to our surgery dates!) So even

though I'm post-surgery, he's tired and hurting more than more than

I am, *plus* in a week he starts a new job (alas we don't get to

change our insurance...), so I would have felt obligated to pick up

the slack even if I could have kept my good health a secret.

But for all you moms who are having a stellar recovery and whose

husbands who do not have serious apnea and are not pre-surgery,

remember this mantra: " Sorry hon, I can't make dinner tonight, so

you'll have to get take-out and bathe the baby while I sit here and

watch a movie on TV. Oh the pain... oh the pain. " :-)

I guess we'll just have to eat lots of tuna salad/baked bean dinners

for a while--hey, it's minimal prep and easy to chew for all of us!

Rhonda