Day 968 - 8 Days Post-Op

The first week post-op is done!

Now that it is, I can officially tell everyone that, overall, the week BEFORE the surgery was actually worse than the week AFTER the surgery. I was suffering from the anxiety of the surgery for the week leading up to it, and that takes a toll. Note that I'm comparing the WEEK before and after surgery. Had I been comparing, say, the two days before and after surgery, the post-op was worse since those first couple of days were rough.

I had one of the worst sleeps last night. I kept coughing and coughing....but it's hard to really let the coughs loose because of the broken jaw. I think I was just very very phlegmy (gross, I know), and I spent a good portion of the night coughing and coughing. Luckily, the movie Vertical Limit was on TV. I saw that movie in the theatres when I was in high school (one of my fonder high school memories actually!), and it's a great flick. Finally got to sleep around 3:30am, but was able to stay asleep until 9:00am.

I also decided that I'm now well enough to do some work from home. I have an office job, so it's not like I'm doing anything physically strenuous. I basically spent the morning catching up on my emails (not done yet actually), and letting people know I'd be working from home for the next little while. If the recovery keeps going this well, I think I'll be able ot get back into the office a week from Monday. I'm still fairly weak, which is keeping me away from the office right now. The weakness was re-confimed yesterday when I decided to take a walk to a Starbucks for a coffee. It's just over a kilometer away. I didn't even make it to the half-way point before turning around and walking home. Too much. Ah well. I'm going to go for another walk today, but only to get some air. I'm not going to try to make it all the way to that Starbucks just yet!

Not much else to update on. The swelling still persists but is receding and I THINK the bruising may  be receding as well (tough to tell - it could be just starting!). Hopefully this recedes a bit more by Monday.

I finally took a look at my post-op pictures....they ain't too pretty. In fact, I'm not too sure I want to post them. When I saw other people's pics, I'm not going to lie, they freaked me out a little bit....probably unnecessarily so. I certainly did not FEEL as bad as I looked, but still. I'll probably still post them, but I want to be clear that EVERYONE'S experience is different, and again, I didn't feel nearly as bad as it looks.

Take care all!

Paul