Well, I definitely look different!

16 days after the operation

Since the bruising and swelling and all things horrible have died down a fair bit, I thought I'd get some pictures up.

Firstly, there’s me on the left before the surgery showing off the incredible hospital fashion. The Converses are mine, but the socks aren’t.

The photo below was taken only a few minutes after the op. I don't really remember this one being taken, but the whiteboard was very useful for expressing emotion, though this was before all the swelling happened, so I could smile anyway. There aren’t any photos of me swollen – I don’t want to give you nightmares. You’re welcome.

 

 

My bite looks all normal. I feel so boring and non-unique. If you hadn’t guessed already, left is before, right is now.

 

My side profile particularly scares me.

 

Obviously my jaw has moved back, which looks weird on me, and my cheeks are still a little bit swollen, which also looks weird. My nose has also moved upwards, which is really annoying because I can't touch it with my tongue anymore!

With all the swelling and lack of movement and all that, I now have specialist equipment in the form of an infant’s toothbrush. There’s also my elastics in a packet there.

One more picture. I didn't even nearly finish the 500ml bottle of codeine they gave me. I still have over 2/3 of the bottle left, so I'm going to save it for a special occasion, or several.

Now then, eating. I've realised I need to learn to chew from scratch, since the movements I used to do were not those of normal people chewing. My movement was only ever up and down. You normal people probably don't realise that you push your jaw forward to bite things. I never had to do that before, but suddenly, now I need to.

I'm beginning to eat normal food again, but when I say 'normal' I mean processed meat-like 'meat'balls from a can and overcooked vegetables. Basically stuff which doesn't require any chewing. I did however manage to eat salmon on Monday!

I've been walking about outside recently. Thankfully I'm not quite getting hay fever yet, I'd imagine blowing my nose and sneezing to be particularly uncomfortable.

The government say that after surgery such as this, I will need to get a new passport done. Unfortunately I only got one done a couple of months ago, what a waste of money that was. Double unfortunately if I do send off for a new passport now, I will look different in June for when I go kayaking in the alps because my swelling will have reduced further by then. But then, if I wait for the swelling to go down before getting a new passport, it won't arrive in time for the trip :( So my plan for now is to try doing the trip with my current passport and hope they let me back into England!

The second motive for writing this post is in the event of me being held at the border, perhaps they'll let me back in if I show them this.