Monday, July 13, 2009 - Day # 5 of recovery

I went to bed last night at around 10:30pm. I was not in too much pain, so I thought it would not be as bad of a night. Wrong. I woke up when my clock said 1:10am, but I forgot in my stupor that this clock is 45 minutes fast (a successful attempt on my part to delude myself into thinking I have more time to sleep in the morning when I hit snooze). Usually, my brain automatically adjusts for the correct time, and I look at the time on my cell phone, which is what I rely on for the alarms to wake me up, but not this morning. So I didn’t realize that I had taken my medicine 40 minutes early until I looked at the clock in the kitchen when I got my ice water and it said 12:30am. Whoops. But let me tell you, the pain didn’t think it was 40 minutes too early. I was hurting. So I didn’t worry too much about it, and went back to bed. The next time I woke up was at 3:30am. Although I had drunk my huge glass of ice water before I went back to bed, and my vaporizer was on, my throat felt thick and dry, and I couldn’t stay in bed. I went to the kitchen and got an ice pack for my neck and the last freezer pop. It was red, but I didn’t care. My throat burned horribly, right in the middle where your uvula is. I knew I couldn’t have anymore Hycet for a while, so I sat on the couch’s recliner, and forced myself to drink more ice water and choke down the freezer pop in an attempt to numb my throat. It was agony. However, it did eventually work, and the pain subsided enough for me to fall asleep on the couch. The next time I woke up it was almost 5am. I got up and gulped down the Hycet, which made my ears burst into an inferno of pain. I decided I’d rather brave this inferno than deal with the throat/uvula pain again though. It was brutal. I went back to bed with my ice water, and after the pain got better I drank the whole glass and had just layed down to wait for the high to hit me when my mom came in and checked on me. I was able to talk again by this point, so I told her that when I get up for my 9:10am dose I wanted to sit on the couch with ice packs on my neck, because I decided that felt better than going back to bed once again. She said that was fine. After that I fell asleep again and had some pretty bizarre dreams, one of which I made myself remember so that I could tell everyone. In my dream, my whole body, hair, and clothing was made up of Post-it notes. Yes, you read right: Post-it notes. The yellow kind. And I was trying to get through my job reading a tele-prompter, live on camera, in some kind of weather report on the TV news, all the while being twirled from side to side, my Post-it notes fluttering around as I spun in lazy loops, in a strange hydrocodone-induced invisible tornado. Strange, huh? The hydrocodone-highs really do make me feel like I am moving, like floating, or spinning. I only feel this at night though, when I don’t have any food in me.

When my mom came to wake me up at around 9am, I was not in as much pain as previously in the night. I took a few sips of water before I drank my medicine, but it still burned going down. My mom got the ice packs ready, and I went to sit on the couch to wait it out until I could drink the ice water. I also had a Slim-Fast, and a freezer pop. Then I fell asleep on the couch until about 11:30am. Being on the couch was better, because I could more easily sip on my water since I was half sitting up. At about 12noon, my mom made me a runny egg and toast, and I tried to eat it. It was incredibly painful to chew. My mom encouraged me to eat some of her pancakes that were really soft, and at that point I lost it. I finally started crying. I am just so tired of being in pain. I’m tired of not being able to open my mouth or chew or eat or swallow and of feeling weak from lack of food. I’m tired of this, period. I want to get better. I need to get better. I need to feel human again. And if that doesn’t start happening very soon, I don’t know what I will do. My mom hugged me when I started crying, and told me she knows I am done and that I will feel better soon. Feeling a little better, I wiped at the tears and my nose, and with dogged determination, ate the rest of the egg and all of the toast. By the end of the meal, it was less painful to eat.

My mom suggested that we watch a movie to take my mind off the pain, so we sat down to watch “The Secret Life of Bees”. About 15 minutes into the movie, it was time to take my medicine again, so we paused it, and I got some Jello with whipped cream and a yogurt to eat after it went into effect. I also got some pop (anything for calories) and of course, more ice water. I ate all of this while watching the rest of the movie. (Which is an extremely wonderful movie, I recommend renting it asap if you haven’t seen it!) So I was feeling better by the end of the movie, and then I spent some time on the computer until dinner. I drank my dose of Hycet about 10 minutes before we sat down. I decided I was going to eat dinner if it killed me, (Beef stew and a sweet roll, yum!) so I sat there for about a half-hour chewing and swallowing. Suddenly, I felt like I was swallowing more than I had put in my mouth. I wondered of some of the scab on the right side came off. I am about due for that to start happening. I continued eating until it just got too painful (I’d eaten about half) then I went to look at my throat. I could only see the top edge of the holes at first, and it looked very red right on the top, like it was starting to separate. I coaxed my mouth open more and saw that there was some pink/red staining in the right hole. The scabs are definitely getting stimulated when I eat normal food. I need to make myself eat more. My lower jaw feels swollen and sore right now, so I’m going to put an ice pack on it and see if I can get it loosened up enough to take some good pictures. The pain is better than before, but still definitely there. So I am allowing myself to be cautiously optimistic. Maybe I am starting to round the corner to healing! I sure hope so.

Well, I couldn’t open my mouth enough, but at least you can see how bright red the edges are in the picture here:

I am trying to make myself eat more regular food to speed things along, but it isn’t easy. It hurts so much! I’ll keep trying. Another update about the stool softeners – I did take one Saturday night and had a small BM on Sunday afternoon. Took another one last night, and had a better BM this afternoon. Still lots of bloating and gas, but I think that’s because I am still not eating enough solid food/fiber during the day. Hopefully that will get better as I force more normal food down my tortured throat. In the meantime, I am continuing with the nightly dose of stool softener.