Post-surgery

While I'm in between medicated states (unconscious and confused), I thought I'd give you all an update as to how things went today.

I was prescribed valium to take last night and right before the appointment so I could be as relaxed as possible.  I had been told by many people, including the pharmacist, that it would knock me out and cause memory loss.  Great!  Being asleep and not remembering what happened sounded perfect.  Unfortunately, I apparently don't react to it that way (go figure!).  While I was able to sleep the night before, I merely woke up feeling like I couldn't stand up straight and was a tad loopy.  But I was still nervous.  I doubled up the dosage for the appointment, but it never did make me feel tired and I was very aware and very nervous the entire time.

They gave me many, many shots to numb me up properly and those hurt like crazy.  I was able to bring my MP3 player and headphones with me to give me some distraction and that helped.  I turned up the volume during drilling and was able to focus on song lyrics rather than what was going on in my mouth - most of the time.

However, we knew that the tooth on the right side was a tooth "bud" and would be a bone extraction.  The tooth on the left side was already coming through, so there was no problem getting that one out.  He had it out of my mouth in under a minute.  Impressive!  But when he worked on the right side, the digging just kept going and going and going and he kept saying, "I can't find it!".  After 15 minutes of digging through my gums, he finally got it out.  But at that point, I was in extreme pain and had tears streaming down my face.  I think he felt bad - he kept asking if I was ok and called us a few hours later to check in again.

Here's the really gross part so feel free to stop reading now:

I was advised to change the gauze in my mouth every six hours.  But I bleed like a stuck pig and anyone who has heard my birth stories - or was there to witness it - knows this.  I made it 20 minutes before I had to switch out the gauze.  I changed the gauze in my mouth four times within an hour.  We stopped at Target on the way home so John could get my vicodin prescription filled (I stayed in the car of course!).  There was so much blood pouring out of my mouth, I had to take off my sweatshirt and wrap it around my mouth.  By the time we got home, I was vomiting blood.  After getting that out of the way, I filled up on vicodin and dramamine and passed out for six hours.

I'm in a lot of pain and am crazy hungry.  Let's face it - broth and jello aren't the most filling things on the planet.  I've been advised that tomorrow will be the worst in terms of pain and swelling, but that I should start feeling gradually better after that.  I made sure both of my professors knew what was going on and they are both being very gracious with this week's homework.

As I feel my second round of vicodin begin to kick in and my spelling mistakes are quickly becoming more frequent, I think it's time to sign off for now.  Thank you so much to everyone who was praying for me today. I kept thinking about that during the appointment and it made me feel better to know that people were thinking about me and sending prayers my way.  It really means a lot.