Feelings…nothing more than feelings
blah blah blah blah blahdy blahdy blah….I liked it on the Muppet show when Beaker came onstage and sang Feelings but he only speaks in “me me” so it was funny..and then the cane came out and hooked him offstage.
I have more feeling in my lips I think. Not as much FIRE, more tingly ache. That’s a good thing. Perma-lip fire is not fun. I also have some feeling in my lower teeth on the right which is weird. I wonder if I am not supposed to bite things because it’s BAD and potentially injurious (is that a word?), or because my teeth don’t touch in the back and whatever I bit couldn’t get chewed afterwards. Guess I’ll ask the Li-man.
The way I see pain is: if it hurts I worry I am doing something to negate my surgery. If you tell me I am SUPPOSED to feel that pain, I’ll live with it. Like in PT post knee surgeries (all 4). You don’t want to end up under the knife again, so you tell your PT when it hurts and they make you stop doing whatever it was that was hurting. But if you have a conversation with them about the KIND of pain you should and should not feel, you can safely get through it without risking injury. Does that make sense?
One time I had scar tissue. It hurt…it was preventing my knee from bending all the way. So I would lie on my back and hold me thigh perpendicular to my body and let gravity pull my lower leg down…it hurt when it pulled on the scar tissue. But when the PT explained to me what I was pulling on, I didn’t mind the pain and I was able to relax my leg a little more, let gravity do a little more work, and SNAP! (loudest thing I have ever heard come from my body…it sounded like a bone breaking!) my knee bent all the way. I shot upright so fast with that noise…and BOTH my PT’s who were on opposite sides of the pretty big clinic came RUNNING over to see if I was okay, and when they got to me I had tears in my eyes because in the SNAP moment I imagined all my stitches has just burst and I was going to have to have surgery all over again, but when they asked if it hurt I shook my head no because it didn’t. So sometimes pain is good…I just want to know the kind that is bad so I won’t do that.
Dr. Li says after the weekend I can start doing jaw exercises. Open, close, open close…then said “well, I guess in your case that would just mean more talking.” Ha. Ha. I don’t think he understands that I am back to full talking capacity. Yes, it hurts after too much talking, but it’s just muscles and tendons being cry babies. I talk whenever I want to. I answer the phone too. I just sound like I am storing a few marshmallows in my mouth. So starting Monday I add jaw exercises. I wonder if I can start exercising my jaw with severing food.
I’m pretty sure I will not want to see the baby food aisle for a very long time after this is over. I made chicken (a la Gerber a couple nights ago and I just could NOT eat it. I guess I’m not as desperate as I was when I thought it was semi-palatable. Desperate times…desperate measures.
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