Day 1: Going Home

(June 2nd, 2016)

Pre-Discharge

So I wake up around 4:00 am in the hospital and I'm feeling about 4/10 on the pain scale. Not too bad, but I can't get back to sleep. My surgeon comes by, tells me how great everything looks, takes off my crazy headwrap bandage, and asks me to try to come off of that morphine soon. Got it, doc. They take me off the 1 mg/hour slow drip, but I'm still able to give myself morphine if I want it. Gradually, my pain increases to about a 7/10 and I self-administer 1 mg of morphine by around 8:00 am. Sometime between 8:00-10:00 am, I throw up twice and have to pee, like, 4 times. The throwing up, which I've read about and totally freaked me out, wasn't as horrific as I'd imagined it to be. Messy, yes, but not painful or traumatizing. All of a sudden, copious amounts of essentially red water shoot out of your mouth into whatever is in front of you. A little puke tray isn't gonna cut it. You need a bucket.

Around 11:00 am, they got me to "walk" a little bit. Uh, I kid you not - it took me at least 15 minutes to walk, maybe, 30 feet. By the time I got back into bed, I was SO TIRED. I just laid there, wrecked from my walk, for over an hour. Of course this is when the doctor comes by again, urging me to go home that afternoon/night. By the time he's there, I'm much more alert (as opposed to 10 minutes before that when I was wrecked). He tells me that the morphine I had at 8:00 am is mostly out of my system by now, and if the hydrocodone can handle my pain then I could go home. So the nurse stuck me with some hydrocodone and anti-nausea meds, I was stable at about 5/10 on the pain scale for a few hours, and I left the hospital around 4:00 pm. 

(A note about the day nurse - she totally ignored what my doctor told me to do! I started asking for hydrocodone after my walk, around 11:00 am. She said she'd come, but never did. Then, when she finally shows up as the doctor is leaving, around 12:30 pm, she goes "Oh, but you have the morphine - why didn't you just use that?" I explained that the doctor (uh, and I) wanted to make sure that the hydrocodone was having some effect before going home and having NO morphine. She basically rolled her eyes at me. Whatever.) 

Here's what I looked like, coming out of the hospital. 

Not too swollen... 

My Precious

Post-Discharge

From the hospital, I went directly to my surgeon's office. (It's like 2 buildings down.) They took an xray of my new jaw (which was a little fuzzy cuz I was still a little woozy) and I think I was told... 

• The surgery went great. All of my nerves were very protected and he worked exactly as he had expected to.
• I only had 4 rubber bands in my mouth - two on each side of my bite. 
• "Maybe next week, we'll take one set off." (Uh, wtf? I have no splint  and the week after surgery I'm gonna be walking around with TWO rubber bands in my mouth? That. Is. Insane.)
• Be careful when I brush, especially on the bottom where all of my stitches are - only brush the "teeth," not the gums.
• No straw/sucking. 
• Obviously liquid diet. 

Once at home, I nuzzled into our "Healing Room." It's right off the front door, next to a bathroom, next to the kitchen, and kind of dark and cozy. Perfect to lay about in. Oh, and it has a non-traditional pull out couch that's wide and firm. When I lay in one corner with all of my pillows and blankets, I can still have things next to me like my ice packs, phone, remotes, water and prune juice squirt bottles, mirror, Aquaphor, etc. Lemme get a picture of my set up... sorry for the mess. It's normally our "Insanity/Paintball/Random Games/Paintings/Movie Room." 

Oh, notice the pillow sitting horizontally on the couch? I found that it made me more comfortable to always have a pillow right under my upper thighs so I would be kind of sitting up or cross-legged and have support. So I'd have back/neck support, and also a little butt/leg support. My husband thinks it's crazy, but I think it helps me because I have the boniest butt. Seriously, I have this kinda pointy butt bone that I don't think other people have. Maybe it used to be a tail... 

So the rest of the night was hubby feeding me through the feeding tube and me sitting around watching TV. I could only eat about 4-6 ounces of liquids at a time. Any more just made me feel sooo full. My go-to's were milk, soylent, and beef broth. 

Pain: Holding steady at about 4/10. That's with hydrocodone every 6 hours. 

Numbness: Since the surgery, I've been able to feel pretty much all of my face on the outside. My chin is a little bit tingly, but I can feel it. 

Discomfort: I'm just tired...

Jaw surgery day 1, done. 

~m