Plate-less

Well I got the plate off yesterday!

It was relatively painless (if you don't count the fact that I kept getting jabbed in the gums with the wires).

It was the weirdest feeling; touching my tongue to the pallate of my mouth! It felt like when you're in the bath or pool too long and your fingers shrivel up. But eventually it felt normal.

I had spaghetti and melted cheese for breakfast and it was THE BEST feeling; not getting cheese stuck in my plate. That and brushing my teeth have to tie for first place...

Wow, I can also shut my lips too! The picture of day 61 is pretty shockingly lit, so I'll have to get another one, but It'll do for now.

So wow, It's almost over! 2 more months of braces and my mouth will be contraption free for the first time in like five years!

Peace out!

Sarah R. S-B.

Jaws [no longer] Wired Shut

Well, they're unwired finally!!

40 DAYS! That is how long they were wired shut for!

I'll tell you, I've never enjoyed the pain of eating food so much!

I ate a few fries the night i got my wires of and it was PAINFULL! But so nice at the same time!!

I really NEVER want to EVER have to go back to the hospital! Screw child birth man! I'll just buy my kids from Africa or whatever, anything's better than that aweful place!

Surprisingly, I still want to be a Neo-natal nurse (new born and premeture babies). But I hate the whole Patient-Nurse communication thing.

I still have a plate in, which sucks. But I get it off on the 7th of May! Then I can kiss that new boyfriend of mine... Ba Ha! If you want to know about that you're going to have to go to my Imagination Central: http://showcase-sarah.blogspot.com/

Well I hope my blog and pictures weren't too scaring for you! I know they were for me! I still have a pink scar on my face from where they stuch that stupid suction tube in!

But hey, don't I look great?

Well I WILL once I get the plate and braces off!!

Thanks for sticking through this with me!!

Sarah xx

Jaws Wired Shut

It's been 38 days...

38 Days since i've eaten. Well real food anyway!

I swear, no matter how hard it is scrubbed, my room will always have the faint smell of tomato soup in it. Not just one type either! No I mean Continental, Arnotts Big Red, Campbell's... all sorts.

I'll admit, in the 38 days I've had my teeth wired shut, I've eaten (or should that be drank) some pretty strange things.

These things consist of mince meat and tomato sauce, curry chicken, green beans and broccoli...

Now, none of this sounds all that weird... unless I add in the fact that they were all PUREE! Yep, they were all blended.

I didn't eat anything too shockingly disgusting... but whilst you drank it you had to forget WHAT exactly you were drinking, or it got a little too much...

Things didn't take long to go back to normal.

I was back at school 2 weeks after I got home, but I was back to school work 2 days after I got home...

I don't mean 'a little bit of maths here, a little bit of chem there'. I mean FULL ON, seven hours stright of planning and doing assignments, nearly EVERY DAY! I wasn't allowed out even on the WEEKENDS!

But it wasn't NEARLY as hard to get back into the swing of school as I thought. I was actually INFRONT for a few days when it came to assignments.

But it didn't take long to become bombarded again! Here's my scheduel for this week:
Monday: Maths test
Tuesday: Music exam, RE film essay, English questions sheet.
Wednesday: English exam, Maths Assignment, R.E. Ethics Essay
Thursday: Chemistry Exam, Get wires off teeth.
Friday: LAST DAY OF TERM ONE...

So school didn't take long to get busy.

Actually, I have an R.E assignment to finish now so... TOODALOO! AND PLEASE REVIEW! (Comment)

Day 10

Well we left the hospital this morning. My Nutritionalist, Physiotherapist, and Surgeon all came to give me their instructions for further eating/ physical activity/hygienic instructions.

Eventually (after a bit of a mix up) we ended up at the Sands hotel. Mum and I walked down the road to Cheap as Chips (the equivalent of Mad Harry's for those with no idea) and I swear we were there for like 2 hours! Mum just wouldn't leave! When we came to Adelaide we only brought one suitcase, but we left with two... and they were BOTH FULL!

But trust me, don't think this was a holiday! It wasn't! I took the suit case and the other stuff we brought back to the hotel and Mum went and got some Continental Cuppa Soup for my dinner. She got Maccas and I tried to eat a fry... It didn't take me long to realise it just wasn't going to work! But I couldn't even taste the salt on the outside of the fry!

Skins was on that night... Tony got hit by a bus. I was the last episode in the season!

Day 9

Day 8 we went for another walk to Rundle Mall, but this time we went to the movies... We walked all around this HUGE Adelaide street but every cinema we got to had been knocked down. We asked for directions like 7 times!

Finally we found one. My legs were so sore from all of the walking the day before and all the walking we did this day was AGONY!

We went and saw Run Fatboy Run. It was a really funny movie! I really enjoyed it.

What did annoy me though was that the Coke was too cold for me to drink. It would freeze my bottom teeth and it hurt to drink it. I had to always have tissues with me because I would dribble so much... It was REALLY bad...

I bought a few books to read though and that was good...

I tonight was my last night in the hospital. We would leave Monday morning and go to another lodge for one night and then go to the airport the next morning and fly home.

Everyone at the hospital was REALLY surprised with how much I had improved since the operation...

I still thought I looked absolutely horrible though.

Day 8

Day eight Mum and I walked to Rundle Mall.

It isn't very far but it took a lot out of me.

But It was good fun. Mum and I went and tried on clothes and saw all of the really kool things there were to see down there. It was really busy but it didn't matter. There were all these people busking. There were people doing gymnastics and then you get the people playing their instruments and there was even this woman who was doing chalk paintings on the pavement. They were WAY kool!

Mum and I went to Dymocks and all in all we had an ok time... There were such strange people in Adelaide. Emo for where I come from is NOT emo! Emo in Adelaide is emo! People who are a little individual in Adelaide go ALL OUT! It's really rather awesome.

I will admit; I did try not to gaze at people for too long. I didn't really want them looking at me either... only because of my swollen face though.

We watched that stupid Huey's Cooking Show when we got back to the hospital. It was hell! He was cooking this really gross looking meal with avacados and mushrooms and all of this random marinated stuff but it was just like: "I can't eat any of that! Look at how nice it would be to CHEW food!"

Then of course dinner came. Mum got this really nice, hot CHEWABLE stir-fry and I got tomato soup...

But atleast by this stage I was sleeping better!

Day 7

Day seven was pretty cruisy.

Mum and I went for a walk to the park across the road (I actually waked this time!) and we just chatted.

When we got back I pulled out my laptop and just did some random typing and stuff. It was good. I was really awake and happy on this day. I wished Dad had left a day later so he could have seen me when I wasn't miserable.

Mum started to crack down on the eating thing today though. She kept telling me that until I started eating, they couldn't take the drip out of my arm, therfore we couldn't go home... But I was still really swollen anyway.

So I ate tomato soup and banana milk shake. But it really was just a good day.

Day 6

Dad left this day.

He went back to Whyalla, SA, because he had to work the next day.

Then Dad had to say good bye and leave. It was kind of sad really. I'd seen him the past three or four days in a row... I wouldn't see him again until July.

Mum took me to for a walk. She got a wheelchair and took me to the zoo. It was pretty nice there but I felt like a bit of a retard being pushed around in a wheelchair with my face all swollen up and stuff.

Mum handed me the camera and told me I could take some pictures...

I swear all of the photos I took were way bad. Half of them were blurry and the other half either didn't have animals in them or the animal wasn't even looking.

This one was the best one out of the lot.

It was pretty shocking...

I was really tired and all these people kept looking at me. I must have looked really retarded.

Seriously... I had this blanket across my lap and a tissue box on top of it because I still didn't have any feeling in my lips, so I dribbled a lot. Not to mention the fact that my face was the size of a balloon and I could hardly open my left eye.

I think it's needless to say that we didn't see too much. After we watched the Hippos get fed then maneuvered our way through the bird enclosure we got to the lions den. By then I was totally ready to go back to the hospital and sleep until I was thirty.

Day 5

This day was another pretty down day.

I did manage to get more food down me, but it was still a pretty bad day.

I had to go for an x-ray at the hospital a few blocks away so the hospital called an ambulance to take me.

I had to lay on the stretcher that the car crash victims get carted away on. They strapped me in under a blanket and pushed me through the hospital out to the ambulance. It was really wierd.

They kept asking Mum if I'd been in an accident.

So we waited for ages for this x-ray room to be ready. Mum kept asking me if I was ok.

Finally, an hour later, we got back to the hospital.

I had another shower and then Dad came and they took the big circular grey thing out of my nose. I thought it was only like an inch and a half long. NOT! It was like 10 centimeters long and gave me a blood nose. It was disgusting!

I pretty much slept the rest of that day.

But of course, sleeping was a nightmare again...

I was up every fourty five or so minutes. But this night my dreams were worse. They were nightmares. And the medication they were giving me through the drip had a strange smell that set in the back of my mind. When I dreampt the smell came back and I was runnng around in my dream, gagging and trying to escape the smell that just wouldn't go away! Then I'd wake up reaching...

Night time just took so much longer to struggle through than day time.

Day 4

I was awake day four.

I got moved out of the ICU ward into my own room and I attempted for the very first time to eat.

It didn't go too well. I was trying to eat custard. We tried it through a straw which I had to position in the side of my cheek. It was really hard because I had to suck REALLY hard, and hardly got anything through the straw. So I got sick of that pretty soon.

Then my physiotherapist came and took me for a 'walk' she asked Mum to take me for little walks around the hospital.

Then I got to have my very first shower since I arrived! I swear to God, it was SO nice! Even though the water wouldn't get above luke-warm, which wasn't hot enough, it was still good to get all of that dry blood off of my face.

Dad came to see me again today.

It was funny, I just kept falling asleep and then waking up to little snippits of conversation.

Dad did buy me a new My Chemical Romance CD... which was AWESOME!

But I wasn't that much of a happy chappie...

I was really down in the dumps and just tired the whole day. I pretty much slept most of this day. My Oma and Grandad came to see me. I was awake when they came, but only just so I just went back to sleep.

I did say hello to them when I woke up... They got me a bear, I called him Zane because he was blue and had a beanie. He looked like a snowboarder so I thought he needed a kool name.

Well then I slept.

Finally it was night-time... and this is the time my body chose that it DIDN'T want to sleep.

I'd fall asleep, and then wake up after I'd had some really strange dream. I had like half a dozen different dreams per night.

I swear they were REALLY weird...

I had dreams about Harry Potter, that movie The Lion King, different letters of the alphabet, EVERYTHING you can imagine.

I woke up once with that song 'The Gambler' in my head. You know: "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run." But that's it... that's all I know of that song... so it was those two lines OVER AND OVER AND OVER like a MILLION times!

I kept waking up gagging, but because I wasn't eating anything, I couldn't throw anything up.

Another thing I had in my head was the alphabet. Like as in: A is for Apple. B is for Ball. So I went through the alphabet, but I couldn't get past T. I kept thinking T is for Tube, which reminded me of the tube I had in my nose (oxygen tube) and I couldn't get past T. No matter how hard I tried, I kept getting reminded of the oxygen tube. I'd get to S. but it only reminded me of: S is for Suction. Then it went to Suction Tube, then back to Tube.

So I'd start again. Sometimes I only got to D. D is for Drip... The drip in my arm... It's a tube.

It was AGONISING!!

Day 2 & 3

These days, I do not remember much of.

I remember waking up... and Mum asking me how I feel.

I didn't really feel much to tell you the truth.

I fell asleep again and when I woke up my Nana and Grandad were in my ICU room (which was really just a curtained off corner).

I felt kind of bad that I was so out of it. I really wanted to have a conversation and tell them thank you for their cards and for visiting, but I didn't stay awake for very long... I don't really know if I remember them leaving...

The next time I woke up my Dad was there.

I noticed that he had cut his hair, but that was it really.

It was really good to see him because it was a face I could fall asleep infront of and there really wasn't any awkwardness. He asked me if I knew what day it was. I really thought it was Saturday night... but it wasn't. It was Monday night... How strange?

I woke up as Dad was leaving. He said he'd come back the next Dad.

When I woke up again Mum asked me if I was ok again. I just told her that I'd missed Skins (only the BEST TV show in the WORLD!). Mum said I hadn't, that it was just starting.

She put my glasses on and I looked up at the TV (which I couldn't see very well as I was so swollen) but I didn't even get past the opening credits before I fell asleep again...

The drugs they were giving me made me MAJORLY trip out! I kept seeing all these yellow high-lighter coloured lines on white surfaces like paper and the walls. I was really kind of out of my mind too...

Day 1

Day one I woke up tired.

Mum got me up and I got dressed, packed up my laptop, ect,...

Brian drove us to the Memorial Hospital and when we got there I had to change into this gown and these booties.

It all happened really fast.

They took my obs (observaions. Stuff like temperature and oxygen levels and pulse) then they gave me the gown. After that they just asked if I was ok with everything that was going on and blah, blah, blah. If I understood and all.

After that they took me to this halway with chairs where I had to sit and wait till the operating theatre was ready for me.

Then I actually had to walk into the theatre and get up onto the table and lie down... They never show that on All Saints or Grey's Anatomy. If there is an operating scene in the TV dramas, they always show after the patient has been cut open. It was honestly really wierd... I mean, lying there why these doctors and nurses put blankets on me and put a drip in my arm.

The nurse guy told my when he was putting the sleey drug into my arm but I can't remember falling asleep. I'd promised myself I was going to get to ten...

To tell you the truth: I didn't even think about counting...

Day 0

On every plane trip there is at least one person who freaks out.

I don’t mean, fists clenched, freaked out. I mean head-in-hands, shaking-and-sobbing, FREAKING out.

There’s always one person who’s totally phobic and every-one else seems to lean away from that person.

They’re like the woman with the baby that cries. Everyone looks at her with sympathetic looks or the ‘your baby’s so cute’ smile, but what they’re really thinking is: “Why did I have to be seated next to/ near the crying baby?”

Yeah, well that woman - the one who freaks out - yeah, that’s my Mum. I mean it. I’m sitting here, next to her why she had her head in her hands and does this kind of sobbing thing and I didn’t know WHAT to do! So I just turn and look past the hot guy next to me, to look out the window.

Hot guy? Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah there was this hot guy sitting next to me.
He was sitting there in his suit in his mid twenties… he had a nice neck…

Not in a ‘I want to sink my fangs in’ type of way. I have this thing… guy’s just have really nice necks... and shoulders.

Brian picked us up from the airport and took us for a little drive (my choice). I got some pretty cool pictures actually.

We stayed at Brian’s ‘rents house that night. I would have preferred a hotel (less awkward) but I figured that putting Mum through that plane flight was bad enough. I just about gave in and said we could take a bus back home… but then I remembered; a plane trip is one and a half hours from Alice Springs to Adelaide, and visa versa. A trip in the bus is at least sixteen hours… I’m just gunna have to say: “Sorry, but your one and a half hours of suffering is preferred over my sixteen.”

Ever since the month count-down people have been asking me how I feel, if I’m nervous, if I’m worried, if I’m scared. I’ve had to keep telling them that I’ve been waiting for this operation since… FOREVER. That I’m so excited that I just don’t have enough room in my central drive to fit worry and fright and nervousness in. I thought that this would still their minds…
Obviously not.

My Dad, Nana and Grandad, Oma and Grandad and maybe even uncle, have all decided that they want to see me in the hospital…

Now, when I discussed this with my Mum and Step Dad they told me it was very spiteful of me to be resentful of having my loving, caring family members want to come and see me during this fragile time… Like, ok, my Dad I understand. He’s my dad… but everyone else? I wanted to tell them that it was very spiteful of them (Mum and Dad) to not understand that I don’t want the entire contents of my extended family to see me whilst I look like a balloon… but I didn’t.

Drabble

This is a drabble that I wrote before I left to Adelaide.

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I’m having a jaw re-construction. The way Dr. Hearn (my surgeon) described it is that I have the jaw models of two completely different people. Here’s a picture of me. It was taken on the 29th of December 2005… I was 13.

I'm on the left.

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Do you notice the buck teeth? Yeah, well that is before my braces... but still, this is how I began.

I've always had buck teeth, even as a baby.

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Ok, I’ll admit it. After I was issued with plates and braces my overbite improved immensely. but my top lip still looks like a ski slope... That is why I am getting this operation.

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Also, if I don’t, my teeth will go back to how they were and all the money paid for plates and braces will have been wasted. I guess it’s sort of a: “you’ve dug the hole half way to China, there’s no way you’re getting back out the way you came so you my as well keep digging” type of thing...

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So welcome to my diary! I hope you find my dry sarcasm uncanny, my disgustingly toothy pictures entertaining. My bloated post-operation pictures scary, my metaphors tolerable and my entries understandable... and I hope you enjoy this diary o’ mine.