random life blog + 16 weeks post op!!

Hello again readers!

First off I'd like to apologize for being aw ay for so long. It's been over 5 weeks since I last posted, but nothing of importance has happened regarding my jaw surgery. However it has been a while so I thought I'd do an update on my life and how my jaw has been lately! :)

So lately, my jaw has been good. Nothing bad has happened, and no milestones have been made either. What I mean by that, is even though I have been stretching my jaw routinely for the past 5 weeks, I haven't made any progress. I can fit 3 fingers vertically in my mouth (using this as measurement lol) and that's really pushing it. Where my jaw connects on the left side of my face becomes extremely painful when I try to stretch my jaw, but there's no issues on my right. I can tell that my right side would have no problem being stretched a lot more, but my left is just locked into place. I'm going to keep working on it, but I'm a little concerned, so if it doesn't stretch anymore in the next month I'll definitely bring this up to my surgeon.

Now, onto chewing!!
Honestly it's hard to talk about food right now as I just inhaled a San Diego Wrap from Shoeless Joe's and now I'm feeling very ill, but this is an important part of my healing process so I must write about it!
I kind of have a love/hate relationship with chewing right now. At times it's pretty painful - A lot of food still can't fit in my mouth, and the foods that I have been craving are so hard to chew. Things like bagels are a huge struggle, and even though I thought chewing gum would help, it doesn't. But, it feels so good to chew again and eat delicious foods that I couldn't eat for 3 months, that I've gained 7 pounds in the last 5 weeks. I don't think that I look bigger, but I feel bigger. I feel more sluggish and gross and just... blah, then I did when I was on a restricted diet. So starting tomorrow I'm eating healthy! Lots of healthy homemade smoothies, salads, and home-cooked chicken. Overall though, it's been a struggle, and a painful one at that.

That's really all there is to know about my jaw! I will be seeing my orthodontist on the 6th of August and hopefully I'll hear some good news about my braces, or even the elastics I wear. I'm supposed to be wearing them all day everyday, but then that means no talking. Ever. My surgeon says I must keep my jaw closed when the elastics are on. Soooo I'm kind of only wearing them when I sleep... and lately that's been about 12 hours so at least it's half the day? We'll see what my orthodontist says (fingers crossed!)

August is actually going to be such a crazy month for me, and I just pray that it's going to be crazy in a good way. Not only do I have my orthodontist appointment, but I have to see my doctor, I have an appointment to see a specialist that I've been trying to see for 10 bloody months now (and whatever appointments I have to make with her after that), I have to do shopping for my residence room and school, I have plans to do something almost every free day I have (Zoo trip, Beach trip), and, my favourite part about this month... my birthday!!

I will be turning 20 on August 19th. It's really a huge shock for me. Usually it's just another birthday, but this year it's kind of a big deal to me. I won't be a teen anymore, I won't be considered a "child", I'll be an adult, and being an adult means taking on a lot more responsibility, more than I think I can handle at this point in my life. I've always been very childish at heart and I know that going to school and having no one to take care of me or be there for me when I'm having trouble with school assignments (or whatever it may be) is huge for me. I'm going to struggle miserably... but this is life, and if I can't do this, then I won't be able to make it on my own. My parents won't be far away, and knowing them, if I'm sick or struggling with anything, they'd wanna drive up and help me. But I feel like that's cheating life, and I need to prove to myself that I can do this on my own.

Anyways! Since I'm on the topic of school, I think I'll talk about everything that's been going in my personal life (non-jaw surgery related)!

This past week I've been at the cottage with my family and Evan. We don't own a cottage to ourselves but we rent out a cottage just outside of Fenelon Falls for a week every summer for the last 4 years. Except for a few little incidents with my sister I had a lot of fun! Evan and I watched every single Harry Potter, went into town quite a bit, spent some time alone on the beach in Fenelon, and we went into Bobcaygeon, a neighbouring town, to do a bit of shopping. I almost bought some Michael Kors shoes but they were too Daft Punk for me. Very flashy.
Unfortunately, this year the cottage was pretty run down. The water for the cottage comes from a well, and the water in the well was very little, so it contained a lot of iron/sulphur. Needless to say, you couldn't turn the tap on for more than a second without smelling sewage. The toilets were stained because of it (although it came right out with Lysol cleaner we bought so idk what the weekly cleaning ladies are doing), the wifi was awful! It was basically dial-up. And oh my god, the garbage was disgusting! The people who were there the week before us accidentally put their garbage in the wrong shed for pick up. So we moved it to the right shed, and there were at least 2 additional weeks of garbage in there! The caretakers have really let it get bad. We're really on the fence on if we're going back next year or not. Maybe if things get fixed there... who knows. We took a lot of photos, and Evan took gorgeous photos of the stars with my Nikon SLR so I'll post those below.

Other than the cottage, I've put all my focus into schooling. I registered for my classes last week, which makes this whole "living on your own and actually going to school again" thing so much more real. It's a very exciting yet nervous feeling. I hate the thought of being away from my family. My home has been my safety net since my anxiety started up, I hate leaving my house because I am 100% anxiety-free here. I think this will be good for me though, pushing me outside my comfort zone to become a functioning member of society.
The one thing I'm really excited about is my elective I'm taking. The one reason I've been kicking myself in the back for not staying in school and getting into University is because I wanted to take cool lecture courses like Psychology and stuff... and, as luck has it, one of the choices for my electives was Principles of Psychology!! I was debating between that and Social Psychology.
Not that anyone is interested, but I'm so proud of actually having college courses and being a college student that I'm going to post my schedule down below with the other pictures.

I am a hugeeee make-up junkie, and so I finally went shopping in Sephora and MAC a couple weeks ago. Literally a girls paradise. From MAC I bought a cream highlighter in Radiant Rose, a powder highlighter in Soft and Gentle, and one of the Mineralized Skin Finish setting powders in Light Plus. From Sephora I bought a matte cream lip stain in number 03 from the Sephora Collection and a waterproof lip pencil in number C3 from MakeUpForEver, however it was too dark so I exchanged it for C1, which is still dark but a bit better. The cream lip stain kind of disappointed me though, it's supposed to be non-transferable and I've tested it, it's transferred every time. Also it's supposed to be a raspberry pink color but on me it looks like Clown Red. I think I should start doing Make Up reviews hahaha.

Well this has been an incredibly long long post about my life lol. Probably unnecessarily long but whateverrrr. Here are the pictures I promised. I hope to post a lot more and I'll be doing an update when I see my ortho!

My favourite of Evan and Chloe :)

what my face looks like 3.5 months post op

lol omg

With each star picture Evan added 5 more seconds of shutter speed so we could get more stars.
This is how the last picture turned out.

These were a bitch to upload cause they were in .NEF format, so I hope you like them!

This post is a bit more personal than most, but when I started making my blog, everything in my life was jaw surgery related. My life was pretty much put on hold because of the surgery, and then while I was recovering, the first couple months were all about my jaw and how the healing was going. Now that everything has slowed down, and not much is going on, this is becoming a lot more of a personal blog.

Hope you enjoyed and I'll update soon
xoxo

13 weeks post op Update

Great news everyone! (You definitely read that in Professor Farnsworth's voice)

So I had my appointment with my surgeon on Tuesday. Nothing new had been going on until that point... well, actually one thing. But I'll mention that in a second.

I went to see him and he told me that he's pretty much done with any adjustments he had to do and that it's all up to my orthodontist now! I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I told him about the pain in the side of my head, and he said it was all muscle tension, and that, as time goes on, it should go away. I'm skeptical but somewhat relieved. And for the best news... I can finally chew!!!

However... as much as this was great news, I wasn't nearly as happy as I should have been. Sunday morning I woke up to immediately find out that a boy I know well, who knew and was friends with almost everyone in town, was hit by a taxi around 3 am and died. Jake was only exactly a month away from being 20.

It's been a horrible week. I've cried every single day and I can't stop thinking about him. It's wonderful that I can chew again, but I'd give up chewing for another 3 months to have him back. We weren't even close these last few years, and it's devastated me. All I hope is that he's in a better place now, and that he didn't suffer any pain. 

Anyways, back to my appointment. You read this blog for my updates on my post op progress, not to hear about people who have passed away. So I have about a 90% diet now, which means I can eat almost anything. I can't remember what I first chewed... all I remember is telling myself that I'm probably gonna forget what I first chewed lmfao. However later that day my next full meal was Quesadillas and salad. 

My teeth have been super sensitive these past couple weeks, so it was hard to chew at first. A lot of what I was eating was cold and it was a bit of a struggle, but it's gotten significantly better. My jaw hurts after I chew a lot though, so I try not to overdo it. The funny thing is that my left jaw is starting to do very small clicks. It used to be my right jaw that clicked! Too weird.  

So I went after my appointment with my surgeon and saw my ortho, and since he can do whatever he needs to do, he took off my surgical hooks!!!! I'm really happy about that, my teeth look so much better, I can't wait until my braces come off. I am still wearing elastics in a triangle shape, I need to start wearing them more so I get my braces off quicker.

Nothing much has happened since I last posted, just some personal things. Saw my nana, did some shopping, put out resumes cause i'm broke and in need of a job, etc. I hope to before and after pictures in the next couple days!!

As for my future plans.. I'm going to my cottage for a week at the end of July, and I'm going to stock up on stuff for residence :) we rent this cottage out but we're thinking this is gonna be our last year, for a lot of reasons. I think I already mentioned this before.. or maybe not. I don't know.

That's about it! I don't see my surgeon for 2 months and I don't see my ortho for a month, so this blog is probably going to become more personal :) I'm gonna stop rambling now, talk to you all soon :)

10.5 weeks post op - Ortho appointment

I wanted to make a quick update, since I promised in my last post that I would when I saw my surgeon!

First off, lately I've got a lottt of views on my blog. At first there weren't many, and so I just wrote whatever, but suddenly it jumped and tons of people have started to view all my posts, and it made me realize that I actually kind of have an audience and I shouldn't be so negative all the time! I'm the kind of person who always tends to look on the bad side of things (unfortunately) but for the sake of all of you who are reading this, I will try to include a lot more positive things about the surgery and post op process, as I'm sure some of  you will be undergoing surgery soon and I don't want to make it seem like it's all bad!

Anyways, my ortho appointment. I didn't have a set time that I was supposed to be there, just as long as I went today. I think the receptionist didn't give me a time because she assumed I was coming straight from my surgeon's office like I usually do. Anyways I saw my orthodontist almost right away, he took a look at my teeth and said I needed to wear elastics again :( to be honest I'm not all that surprised, I've been watching my bite like a hawk these last couple weeks and even I noticed a difference in the way it looked and felt, so I'm actually kind of relieved that elastics are on again, now nothing can move out of place! He put the elastics on each side, in a triangle - what I mean by that, is that the elastic is hooked onto the top and bottom hook like usual, but stretched farther back and looped onto the next hook at the bottom. I'll post pictures soon if that doesn't make sense!
I have to wear the elastics like this all day every day. Which doesn't necessarily bug me. What bugs me is that none of my surgical hooks are being used, and yet my ortho won't take them off, cause I see my surgeon in 2 weeks time, and my surgeon might tell me I need them again. Understandable but it still sucks.

Other than that everything is still the same as the last time I updated. I really need to talk to my surgeon about the pain in my head. I found a sore spot, pushed on it, and the pain was so excruciating that I just cried for hours. Right now I'm going through a bit of a stressful time, I have to worry about paying tuition and residence fees on time, I'm completely broke, no job, worrying about my jaw... It's not that bad, but it's still more stress than I've gone through in a while.

So what's everyone doing for the long weekend? For my Canadian friends, I mean. Canada Day is monday!! I'm so excited cause I'm going camping again at my friends uncles. You know, the place I went to just over a month ago when I had my car accident? I really love the place and I'm pretty excited.

Anyways, I hope you guys are having a good start to your week and I hope the rest of the week is good to you as well! I promise to update soon.

xo

Surgeon's appointment, 8 and a half weeks post op

So I wanted to do a a quick update on the appointments I had with my surgeon and my orthodontist today.

I woke up late this morning... as usual. Rushed to get ready, and got to my surgeons office in record timing. I waited for him for like half an hour... 10 min in the waiting room and 20 in the "dentist room" as I call it. While I was in the waiting room, this elderly lady comes in and is like "I'm here for my 11:45 am appointment with Dr. (Insert name here)." It was 9:30 am. What the?

So anyways he finally comes into the Dentist Room and checks my bite, says it's good, and then wiggles my upper jaw. He then says that my upper jaw STILL isn't attached to my face and that he wants me to ask my orthodontist about having my elastics off fully now. This makes me nervous because I feel like my bite shifts throughout the day. It gets farther and farther apart. Anyways, he says because my upper jaw still isn't attached, he would prefer I don't chew food for another month, or at least eat food that requires minimal chewing. My heart sank, these have been the best 4 days of my life.
The shitty thing is that I won't be seeing my surgeon for another month, so everything has slowed down a month basically. Bleh.

Then I went to my orthodontist. I was in and out in 5 minutes which is unusual but hey I'm not complaining. I told my ortho about having the elastics off completely now, and he was hesitant but said that we would have them off for 2 weeks, I would then see him again, and if nothing moved then we keep them off until I see my surgeon 2 weeks after that. But he said it would be too much of a pain to take the surgical hooks off and then have to put them back on, so they're gonna be on for at least another month.

The only good news I got today was that I got accepted into a Single Room for residence. Other than that I'm pretty depressed about the whole thing, I feel like I've completely wasted my time with this process. I have pain on the side of my face, I still cant chew, I hate my physical features (most of them) and everything is taking so god damn fucking long to heal.
Honestly I should have never done this.