Day 49: Seven Weeks On....

Left Jaw Pain 0/10       (8/10 during failed attempts to chew)
Right Jaw Pain: 0/10    
Hip Pain: 1/10
Inconvenience factor: 3/10
Hipbone bits in my cheek 1/10 

With the Christmas Silly Season I must apologise for missing a blog week! Far too much was going on and I became horribly distracted!

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas with family and friends and savoured EVERY mouthful of food that you CHEWED! Sadly, I was not so fortunate. I am still failing to successfully accomplish that fundamental and most basic of skills.....chewing. Aaargh!!!

So my Christmas feasts were limited to things I could essentially mash! I shouldn't really complain - Roast veggies with gravy are pretty yummy and I can stuff many desserts and things of chocolately goodness into my mouth!!!
 I guess you might be wondering what the problem with chewing is??? It's a combination of things really.....

• I can't open my mouth very widely so only small things can go in
• I still have lots of numbness in my mouth and can't tell where the food is
• My teeth especially the molars don't meet properly yet (we're working on it)
• My still internally swollen cheek still gets in the way and unwittingly chomped on
• The muscles in my jaw joints are not very strong and achieving pressure is difficult
• The jaw muscles are also not very happy when stretched or moved 'wrongly' and give incredibly painful feedback

Patience, Patience, Patience!!!

I did receive a great Christmas present though.....FINALLY my X-RAYS! Woo Hoo! My face is full of metal - plates, screws, pins - check it out!  

 

The right side of this image above is the left side of my face - the perfectly behaved side. The other side (on the left) is the right side I have whinged so much about - the one that suffered the 'unfavourable split'. 
C - shows you where the first cut was made. 
A -  shows where the jaw ended up splitting very unfavourably
B - shows where the surgeon had to cut/break my jaw to complete the surgery. 
Just below A you can see three pins that were used to hold the broken jaw all together.
D - shows the pin used to attach the hip bone to my cheek. 

Front view....Arrow shows the mess that my right jaw turned into as the initial break site.

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