I sneezed my teeth out this morning. How’s your day going?
Manage to push them back in and they stayed (sort of) so that’s cool. They’re pretty precarious though.

Sneezing is a difficult thing. When you can’t sneeze out of your permanently blocked nose and your face is an open cavity between your nose and your mouth and ear, it just all gets a bit confused. I placed my hands into my mouth and wedged the teeth up in there for the second one but then it felt like the sneeze exploded into the gap where my eye used to be and it took a while to recover from the headache that came with it. I sneezed lots of goo out my mouth though so that’s fun. I guess it just goes wherever it can, since it can’t go out my nose. It’s in my ear too. I guess that’s like people who hold their nose when they sneeze? NEVER understood that.

With details like these, aren’t you glad you’re here? What else can I find for you.

It was a different sort of… I don’t want to say panic because it’s not… Slight concern when you go straight home after surgery and the next day your saliva is blood… It cleared up after a couple of days though. It was good to be able to have my friend come and stay with me after surgery, as per hospital orders, but exhausting too. Which is no reflection on him, just that I really need to rest, on my own, after surgery. But I did that after he left. I mostly stayed in bed on Monday and I felt guilty for a moment then realised I’m recovering from surgery and that’s probably a pretty damn appropriate way to spend a day!

Sleeping is a wild ride. I can’t breathe through my nose much, as we’ve established, and breathing through your mouth is difficult for sleeping at the best of times let alone when there’s a big thing that resembles teeth that falls down during the night and obstructs your breathing. It makes me panic a bit when it does – partly because I’m worried one time it won’t stay when I push it back up and will go back to tumbling constantly out of my mouth, and partly because it hurts to push it back. But so far not the end of the world.

My right ear is still underwater. Drinking has become significantly harder with this latest surgery. Every sip I take, the liquid somehow escapes into my ear and nose and all this air comes from nowhere which I end up swallowing instead. I almost drown myself each time I try to drink and have a stomach full of air.

But I keep trying, because the other option is a feeding tube and I want to avoid that at all costs. So it’s constant drowning and living off eggs. Good thing I can tolerate eggs these days.

Speaking is not really a possibility anymore either. Nothing in my mouth seals so air just sort of moves around with reckless abandon. Consonants are tricky. I can speak in small amounts if I have to but it’s not easy or comfortable and I have to hold my teeth in place (which only sort of works). I sound like I’m underwater and have a blocked nose, which I suppose it’s not far from the truth. Once again grateful for the pandemic way of life that means I can mostly avoid other humans for the time being.

These things won’t improve or get better on their own or with time, I just need to wait for more surgeries. I don’t know when they will be. But I like to think these small things are at least helping them to understand the lie of the land, even if they’re really rubbish for me. So they can get to know how to make it as good as possible in later steps… I’ll keep telling myself that anyway.

I watched the film The Mummy when I was younger, great movie. I can neither confirm nor deny whether it had an impact on me studying ancient history at uni. But there is a scene where scarab beetles go under their skin and burrow their way to their brains. It feels like that in my face, with all the nerve damage. So that’s fun.

In other news, apparently they’re going to be able to get me a Covid vaccine, after a lot of trouble trying. Though as the day for the first one has now already changed 3 times in the 3 hours since I found out I was getting it, I guess I’ll believe it when I see it!

Happy Wednesday, all!