Day 5: Sllllooooowwwww progress & pics

My energy level continues to be very low, in part because sleep is still pretty crappy. I actually had insomnia last night. I think that the pseudoephedrine is contributing to that. I'm going to back off on that by lunch. I also may take an ambien tonight just to help things along.

One of the things that has helped me is to have small but specific goals for each day: eat something in particular or a certain number of times, drink a certain amount of water. Today, I got a little more ambitious and have decided to work on, uh, getting my entire digestive system on track again. This diet has left me feeling a little queasy at times and not exactly my regular self. I've been trying to take in some fiber in the form of psyllium and some wheat bran since Day 3. Today, I pulled out some bigger guns. I took some (gag) epsom salt in water this morning and had a (choke) small glass of prune juice with breakfast. Then, I had a (yum!) cup of coffee after breakfast. It worked, a little, anyway. Definitely, uh, moving things in the right direction. OK, that's my pun RDA for today.

As you can see from the photos below, the swelling is down a very small amount, but the bruising is starting to show up. I've got a technicolor one shaped like a triangle that runs from my chin down to the center of my chest. I won't share that with you. But, you can probably see the sickly yellow tint to my skin in the three photos below. I know I look a bit bedraggled in the first one. Chalk it up to extremely poor sleep since Tuesday night.





I continue to have twinges in my cheeks, lips and chin. Last night I also had a few little jabs of pain in my palate. Although none of it is all that pleasant, it is, regardless, a good sign that I'll probably regain some feeling in those spots.

Eating is still a chore. It's almost impossible to close my lips completely so I leak a lot. It's also hard to talk, although Mary seems to be able to make me out most of the time and the couple of very brief phone conversations I've had with family have gone OK. I'm not spouting off any soliloquies, though. Mainly, it's just a couple of one and two-syllable words. I'm pretty sure that the lip situation will improve as the swelling goes down and my lips recover from being stretched during surgery.

Today, I think I'll watch a movie or play a video game or some other mindless task. Outside, it's been raining all morning and it's likely to stay that way for a while. It's a good day to be laid up.