Day 93 (well, 94 now that it's past midnight): 3 months post-op update!

Pain Level: 2 - The numb part of my chin and lip has been hurting quite a bit these few days. I've somehow got two mouth ulcers around that area, and it is swollen. I'm getting a lot of electrocutey zaps throughout the day.

Swelling: General swelling is going down slowly now, though the right side of my face is still a little tight.

Sleep last night: Slept really late because I got caught up in work. Still been sleeping faced up because I'm afraid of messing the jaw up whilst it's healing. Been using a higher pillow than I was used to before the surgery (just in case I still have to keep the swelling in check).
Other weirdness: Twice I had a weird feeling in my upper palette and my eyes were somewhat forced to squint for a moment. It was weird. 

Mood: A little moody because of the ulcers, the swollen left part of my lower lip, and my sad left foot (see previous post)

Thought to drop in and write a little note about how things are at 3 months post-op.

Sad little ulcers. :(

I suppose most of the swelling on my face has subsided... perhaps with another 15% more to go. I'm still quite careful with my face though because I can still feel the tightness and a little swelling. There was a period of two or three days when I wasn't feeling too well, I developed some sort of fever and somehow my upper palette became a bit swollen and slightly soft (a little bit like how it was in the early post-op days) and that freaked me out a bit. But it subsided.

Till now, I still can't chew and that frustrates me quite a bit - especially that I LOVE vegetables. Even tearing simple greens like butterhead lettuce leaves is difficult. I generally give up and either use my hands/cutlery to tear them up into little pieces and swallow them whole, or leave it altogether. I guess patience is the name of the game. Still, it kinda sucks that I can't seem to chew.

I also can't quite open my mouth as wide as jaws are supposed to be able to (I've checked with my sisters and a few friends and they can go up to four or five fingers wide!). I'm hovering at one and a half and actually think it might be my current maximum. At my last visit with Orthoman, he advised me to do a little more exercise with my jaws to stretch the muscles a little. I guess it doesn't help that I don't really like to talk, and when I do it's pretty tiring after a while.

Other than that... Hair is still dropping and that's not fun either.

On the upside, I think I'm getting used to the fact that I've gone through the jaw surgery and I look a little different. To some extent I think I'm also quite appreciating the results....but more so, the fact that I had gone through this experience with a courage I didn't know I had.

These days, life has been mostly about work and about governmental policies - of which the cases that I have had to deal with these past few months are a little too complicated to share. But let's just say that I've spent most of the past few months analyzing a specific policy due to the circumstances at work, and spent a few hours today drawing up a flow chart and drafting a long explanatory email to illustrate the exact problems with the policy.

Gosh, it's 2 in the morning.
I gotta get to sleep... Another long day tomorrow.