please sign this release form

Surgery was today and.....

IT WENT GREAT!

 (This is a picture of my mouth before)

I went in there relatively comfortable, except for the knots in my stomach (typical), and was ready to get things going when the doctor gave me a release form I've never seen before that said he he shatters/otherwise wrecks my jawbone and/or other elements of my facial structure, ain't his bad.

And he hadn't even, in our numerous conversations about this, mentioned that my jaw breaking was even a possibility! Kind of ironic, since I had all of this work done to protect my very very fragile bone from breaking.
So I bit my tongue and signed it, praying for the best. Sometimes you just have to sign the release form and not even think about it.  
They gave me my IV and my sleepy shot. I got a kiss from Eli right before drifting off (our tradition), and babbled to the doctor about the sun blisters on my face.

And was awoken by the trying to ratchet the implant out of the bone.  My eyes were taped shut but I knew exactly what was going on and man did it hurt. But I wake up in the middle of surgeries quite often and I learned long ago that the best solution is to try to yoga-breathe through my nose, and transport my mind somewhere else.  I've done meditation, tried to mentally list all of the I Love Lucy episodes I can think of, planned my ultimate trip around the world, composed poems in my head, etc.

Thanks to the assistant anesthesiologist in the room that could tell I had come to and was in excruciating pain, he put me back out for a bit. I woke up a few more times, and the surgery went longer than they anticipated because the bone had grown so firmly around the implant, but they got it out successfully.

He said that the top few millimeters of the implant were infected and the bone was mushy, so that was cut out, but the bone itself does not look infected !!! And the first implant still looks good and he doesn't think it was exposed to the infection today, so it should be alright.
I saw the implant sitting on the tray when I woke up. It was strange. Such a small piece of pure metal made by a machine, causing so many problems inside of my body.  Kind of like a bullet.
It had a piece of my bone on it, because when they couldn't get it out they cut the bone around it to remove it safely.

They're sending that little bullet to a lab for a culture, so we can see the source of the infection and hopefully an antibiotic that will be more effective than the Amoxocillin I'm currently on.
And, please God, this will be it.  Once all of the pain wears off and I heal up, I will be completely better--i.e. the infection was causing all of this and we don't have to worry about anything else.

They said I will notice an immediate difference and feel peppier and healthier in a few days. I can't remember how being healthy will actually feel! I've probably had this infection a year and a half and I've gotten used to always feeling exhausted, achey, feverish. I was looking into solutions for my low blood pressure and adrenal fatigue, when it could have been this all of the time!

I'm looking forward baby.

Watercolor of the day:

Now I'm back to Percocet, brownies, an ice pack, and Stupid, Crazy Love.