Details of a painful weekend.

The past 5 days have been painful and honestly, a complete blur, hence my lack of blogging. Needless to say, I survived my wisdom teeth surgery. However my recovery has been nothing short of miserable. I know everyone has a different experience with this surgery and I guess I got the short end of the stick. I would've loved to have been one of those "no big deal" stories. But for me, it was awful. My face says it all. Misery.

This picture was taken the day of the surgery, which was actually my best day out of the last 5 days because I was still on the IV meds, my mouth was still entirely numb, and the swelling had yet to set in. Sadly, the picture above was me at my best. Sheesh... that's an awful picture and yes, I realize I look like I'm 12. It happens. I actually have no recollection of this picture being taken and really I can't remember anything at all from Friday. Apparently, I was texting people right after my surgery? Definitely no memory of that!

As you can also see in this picture, I had one very special little nurse all weekend, Bailey. Usually she is a crazy, hyper little devil of a dog but during my recovery she was calm, cuddly, and never left my side. Somehow she knew I wasn't feeling well and just wanted to make me better. So sweet :) It was too good to be true though because as of this morning she knew I was feeling better and went right back to her crazy ways. Good thing she's cute! Okay, back to the details of my weekend... or at least what I can patch together of it... like I said, total blur.
 
Friday I woke up early and exactly an hour before the surgery I took the Valium that my doctor prescribed. I never take any sort of medicine (I even hate taking aspirin!) so this medicine really had an effect on me. I would say within just 15 minutes I was loopy and dizzy and extremely relaxed. This is when the blur begin to take effect. I somewhat remember being driven to the doctor's and (maybe?) signing some paperwork before being ushered into the operating room. They gave me an IV, which because of my fear of needles would have been a big deal but the Valium made me not really care too much, and then a few seconds later it was lights out for me. Apparently the surgery went well but my lower left tooth had a hard time coming out and they said I should expect to be bothered by that for several weeks.

Next thing I can remember, I am waking up at home in my bed, at which point I drug myself down to the couch where I assume that the lovely picture above was taken. During that time I can't remember, I apparently went to the pharmacy, drank a milkshake from Sonic, and texted various people. Strange...

The rest of the day was spent drifting in and out of sleep, changing bloody gauze out of my mouth (I know, gross right?), and having many strange dreams - at least I think they were dreams. They were those dreams where you wake up and do something (in the dream) that could actually be possible in reality and then you wake up in real life very confused by it; so with my lack of memory it is very possible that those dreams were in fact reality.

Saturday the misery began to set in along with lots of pain. I woke up feeling like someone had pounded my jaw with a hammer. Because of this, I continued to take vicodin the entire day which took away the pain but essentially made me sleep... the entire day! I thought for sure I had slept through the worst of it...

...and then Sunday came. What an awful day! I decided to stop taking vicodin because it made me so sleepy and loopy but that was a bad decision. I tried to switch to taking the high dose of ibuprofen the doctor prescribed but it ended up making me feel really sick and very dizzy... and barely helped with the pain! Maybe I'm a wimp, but I really think that anyone would be miserable if they felt how I felt. On top of all the pain, I was so sick of eating jello and pudding and starving for some real food. I don't think I can really put into words how awful that day was.

On Monday I was supposed to head back to work but after the day I had on Sunday I knew it just wasn't going to happen. I was actually really bummed about it because I was dying to get out of the house seeing as I had not even stepped outside since Friday morning. It was good that I took the day off though because I was still not doing great. Monday marked day 4 of laying around doing nothing, which would've been wonderful had I not been in so much pain. Jake felt bad for me and took me out into town to get some yummy potato soup. Finally something good in my stomach! My one hour soup date with Jake was by far the best part my weekend.

Thankfully today, Tuesday, I woke up feeling much much better. It was almost strange to me to wake up and not be immediately greeted by a throbbing pain in my mouth. Granted, that throbbing pain showed up a few minutes later, but it was a much more manageable pain. Today I am back at work and am glad to have finally made it through the worst. Thanks to everyone who thought of me over the past few days and gave me great advice. I really, really appreciate it!

I am sure I will have many more painful experiences in my life (and there are sure to be some much worse than this), but for now all I can say is that I am 100% thankful that I never have to get my wisdom teeth out again!