Day 4

4:30 AM: I can't sleep and I have yet to sleep through the night. I take my pain medication about every four to five hours so say I take it around 9:00 pm I should be able to sleep until about 2:00 am. Well all that depends on how well I can breathe. One of the issues of not being able to open your mouth is not being able to cough or swallow phlegm that gets stuck in the back of your throat. Not to mention, I can't sleep on my side or my stomach or put any pressure on my jaw at all so all that throat junk is literally draining into my windpipe all night, so roughly every twenty minutes I wake up having to cough and sniffle violently for breath. So that is a delightful new development. The swelling also seemed to have gone down significantly yesterday but it is back and fully swinging so that is painful as well.

I also wanted to explain the marks on my face in the pictures I've been posting. So basically before surgery they marked me up and made sure they were making incisions in all the right places but then didn't clean up their mess lol. My surgeon, Dr. Stienbacher, had to write his initials on my forehead before operating to make sure that they weren't going to be cutting open the wrong person. Which is apparently something Yale has to worry about a lot  because autographing your patient is required before surgery...Thankfully the "JS" that was on my forehead has washed off. Most of the other big markings are sharpie but some of it it blood from when they had to re-position my chin. Unfortunately I can't remove the bandage yet so I am forced to just look like I can't wash my face, sorry guys. Oh and that thing that is on my head? Jaw Bra. That is legit what it is called. And its the bane of my existence. But, "Your hair has never looked sexier" -Collin Schuster.