Recovery Week 4: November 23-29, 2015

My recovery continues to go well. I feel better and have more energy after every week. I had a follow up appointment with my Surgeon on Monday. He said everything is looking and healing well. I go back to see Him in two weeks.

As far as pain I really don't have any in my jaw or face, just an occasional nerve recovering that tingles. There is still a tiny bit of swelling left in my face (mostly on the right side), and still some numbness in my bottom lip and chin. The Surgeon said that it can take up to six months for all the nerves to recover, and all the numbness to go away, so everything is normal there.

My hip and thigh are still sore from the bone graft, but his is normal as well. The Surgeon and his Nurse told me that being more active and walking will really help with that. I was much more active this week and have noticed a difference.

Thursday was of course Thanksgiving. I hope yours was great! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was cold and snowy here in Colorado Springs, but beautiful. Our family spent the morning at home, and the evening at my Parents house with them, and my Brother and his Wife. It was a good day!

One note about Thanksgiving. For my liquid diet, I have stuck with a lot of powders, soups, pre-made meal replacement shakes, yogurt, apple sauce, and the like. I have not really tried blending and drinking a "normal" meal. So, on Thanksgiving, I decided to give it a go. My Dad has a Vitamix blender, so in went some; turkey (white & dark), stuffing, yams, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, gravy, cranberry sauce, a little riesling (a sweet white wine), and some water to thin it all out. Surprisingly, it tasted okay and did not make me vomit. It was very strange drinking my Thanksgiving meal, but I am grateful I was able to have it. Good times indeed. Here is a picture of me with my blended Thanksgiving dinner.

Want to try my liquid Thanksgiving dinner?

Overall, I am feeling pretty good. I am growing weary of the liquid diet, but I don't want to mess anything up or knock some of my teeth out, so I will stay the course. Hopefully, if all continues to go well, I will be able to start chewing food in two weeks. Here are some updated picks of how my face is looking.

You can see the right side of my face is a little swollen still compared to the left side.

Thanks to the many who have reached out with kind words, thoughts, and prayers for my recovery. As always, thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I pray that God blesses you and your family.

Recovery Week 3: November 16-22, 2015

Monday I had a follow up appointment with my Surgeon. He said that my healing was ahead of schedule and everything was looking great. The drive to and from his office was not fun as a major storm was rolling into Colorado. It normally takes about 50 minutes to get home from the Surgeon's office, because of the weather and traffic, it took my Mom and I a little over two hours to get home. Thanks for driving me Mom!

Also I decided to try going through the day without taking any pain medication to see how I would feel with out it. For the most part I felt fine. I did end up taking some before bed to help me sleep.

Tuesday...HOLY SNOW BATMAN!!! A snow storm/ blizzard that started last night made for a a family snow day at home. Carmen's school was canceled and Sarah called into work, because she did not want to risk a car accident driving in the snow, ice, wind, etc. There was really no option for her, because she would not have been able to get out of our driveway or neighborhood. Several cars were stuck in the streets in our neighborhood. I did try to shovel some snow, but I could not do much as my right hip/ pelvis began to ache where the bone graft was taken. Overall though, I felt pretty good today and we had a nice family snow day at home. I went without my pain medicine until I went to bed again. Here are some pictures of the snow.

Wednesday was a lot like Tuesday. School canceled for Carmen, and Sarah had to call in to work due to the amount of snow still at the bottom of our driveway and in the street. Still no way either of our cars would make it through the 3-5 feet of snow piled there. We had another nice family day at home. Sarah and a few neighbors shoveled enough of a path to be able to at least get Sarah's car out of the driveway in the morning. One neighbor even stopped by with a snowblower and helped for a little bit. Other than my hip still a little sore from shoveling on Tuesday, I felt really good. My Dad with my brother's help brought his snowblower in the evening over for us to use tomorrow. I did once again take some pain medicine before bed.

Thursday Sarah was back to work, Carmen was back to school, and Uriah went to his normal Thursday child care. I had the day to myself to rest. I did use the snowblower for a few hours and make enough room to get my car out of the garage. However, I noticed that it was not working properly as all the blades were not spinning. I called my Dad to let him know. I might have over done it a bit as my hip area got pretty sore again.

Later that evening my Dad came over to the house to look at the snowblower with me. Turns out it's an easy fix as there are the pins in the axel that are designed to sheer off if the blades get stuck to prevent massive damage to the axel or differential of the snowblower. Then my Mom and Dad, said "You can keep this snowblower." What? Thank you Mom and Dad!!! Turns out since my parents moved and downsized my Dad felt this snowblower was too big for his little driveway and wanted a much smaller one, so he purchased a smaller one and gave me his! This will be a huge blessing for Sarah and I.



Also one last note, for the first time I took no pain medicine at all, even forgot before I went to bed.    
Friday, Uriah & I were together all day. Since I had not been taking the pain medicine I decided to drive for the first time today. I went to the the store to get some of the sheer pins to fix the snowblower. When we got home Uriah and I fixed the snowblower and cleared some more.

Saturday was Uriah's 5th Birthday! We celebrated with him most of the day and I felt pretty good.

Sunday, we went to Church & watched some football. The kids went to Grandma & Grandpa's house for a sleep over, so Sarah and I had a nice quiet evening at home.

Overall this was a good week of healing for me. I felt much better and had a lot more energy. My hip and thigh are still sore from the bone graft, but the Surgeon said that would be the case. The incision is healing well though. I still have some numbness in my chin and bottom lip, but really no pain in my jaw or teeth. The swelling in my face is almost gone. I have been able to take off the rubber bands to eat (well drink) one meal, and brush my teeth with them out each day. That has been really nice, because as you can imagine having your jaw held shut by rubber bands is not much fun. Also I have been able to go without pain medicine since Wednesday night which is nice, because that means, I can drive myself again and don't have to rely on others to drive me around. Here are some pictures of my face so you can see that it's almost my new normal.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and for caring about my recovery from surgery. I pray God blesses you and your family!