Tag: jawbreaking but also heartbreaking

Not by the Nerves in My Chinny Chin Chin!

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Then I’ll slurp and I’ll burp and I’ll get oatmeal all over your shirt again!

Just another typical afternoon here in Fractured Fairy Tale Land.

Coming back to work has proven difficult in terms of cleaning out my mouth, hydrating myself properly, and eating on schedule. Plus every meal means a guaranteed stain somewhere on my clothing. Just moments ago, some yogurt plopped on my pants. I’ve never felt so empowered.

I am intrigued by having a numb chin though. It’s like the opposite of a phantom limb because it’s there but I just have no sensation in it whatsoever. I like to tap on it and squish it around because it’s amazing how something can be fully alive, but feel totally dead to you. [Insert forced joke about ex-boyfriends. LADIES?!? Pandering.]

Imagine if this guy couldn’t feel his chin! Maybe that’s what’s on his mind.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Also my craving for a nice sandwich remains unrequited though applesauce has become akin to a new lover for me. Glop gloop.

I did get a piece of office birthday cake though I couldn’t balance my cake-consumption-to-banter ratio because I was too concerned about chin crumbs. Small victories!

Oh, also, this is from a press release I got at work [my red italicized comments are in brackets]:

“Workers shared some of the craziest things their co-workers have done on the job:

  • Co-worker ate the cheese off the pizza box at a company meeting. [And the problem is?]

  • Co-worker talks openly about flatulence. [In this case, words are preferred to actions.]

  • Co-worker in the cubicle next to me wears 3-D glasses with the lenses removed. [Smart, because real life is already 3-D, plus you can never be too prepared for your next Avatar viewing.]

  • Co-worker repeatedly bangs a mallet on the table for no apparent reason. [This one is my favorite. Let the law decide!]

  • Co-worker whistles 8 hours a day. [Let me guess the song: “Whistle While You Work.”]

  • Co-worker chews tobacco and spits it into empty soda bottles. [Onto the floor would be grosser though.]

  • Former boss brought a baby sippy cup to a meeting and started drinking out of it. [This seems like a open-and-shut case of JAWS. *Bangs mallet*]

  • Co-worker cleaned fingernails using a counterpart’s business card while sitting in their office. [Passive-aggressive scare tactics. We’ve all been there.]”

    • I Got My Voice Back & Indigestion With It!

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    I feel like the little mermaid if she was a spokesperson for Gas-X. Tongue returns but stomach burns. Actually, thankfully, two days later when I am finishing up this overdue scribble, my stomach has toned down some of its G.I. Jane defensive tactics. But, in the aftermath, we (being the rest of my royal body) remain penitent and cautious.

    On Wednesday, my tongue was liberated from soli-teary confinement! I thought it would burst out in a bravado solo (reminiscent of a musical a hardened ex-con penned behind bars) as this jacked up, reformed albeit still smooth criminal but instead it looked like a ghost of itself, according to my mom, pale and shaky to the touch. I guess I Cask of Amontillado‘d the sucker (licker? That still sound crude! Innuendo, why do you plague me?).

    I photo-documented the event itself, because it had its share of Hallmark/someecards moments.

    Here is my view from the chair at the surgeon’s office in the waiting room. You can’t see it, dearest reader, but on the screen are intimate portraits of the different surgeries and fix-ups the surgeon performs. Also a couple newspapers on the table to keep people grounded. Their office is pretty fancy and contempo. Chairs without armrests, sinks without faucets. It’s the future! Can you handle it?


    Here is the surgeon with his assistant taking off the majority of my rubber bands. My tongue’s jail cell was being deconstructed as though a war had just ended, and a news of a ceasefire was broadcast over a coconut radio!

    Here is the moment of truth where I am opening my mouth for the first time, and a heavenly light shines down on my face. Don’t question it! My surgeon is standing by!

    My surgeon also has a sense of humor because once normal human speech was returned unto me (albeit with two “guiding” rubber bands. Can’t go cold turkey right away.), I told him one side of my face hurt more than the other, and he told me that his assisting surgeon did that side of my face and he did the “good” side. Charmer!

    I made a thank-you card for him, which my mother quite vocally instructed me to present as though I were an infant (I haven’t even started teething again)! But that was nothing compared to when she asked how my diarrhea was right in front of everybody and when there was stuff in my mouth so I couldn’t even defend my honor! Straight outta Cosmo Girl. The surgeon tastefully and tactfully pretended she hadn’t brought it up at all. “What diarrhea?” he might have innocently asked in a post-appointment no-holds barred interview with Fox’s off-off-off cable subsidiary.

    Boyfie helped me come up with the concept of the card which is the shark Jaws on the outside:


    And the interior of a thankful mouth when you open it up, plus that delicious “Jawesome” play on words:


    Guess what?! My surgeon really liked the card! He even gave me a hug!!! I could barely handle it. I think my pain meds have been making me superduper emotional lately so I would have started bawling then and there, but I reined it in. He even ran around his office and showed the card to his office manager and secretary and everybody. He said he’d put it up in his office and praised its creativity. I felt like I just won a Golden Globe. Does that make me out of touch? I hope so.

    As proof of my non-stop sentimentality, I also made a card for my dad’s co-workers in the operating room and intensive care unit for him to take to work to thank them for taking such good care of me. And apparently they put it on their braggy bulletin board! Two out of two! Outta the park!


    Well, right after tongue release, my mom and I went out to lunch to celebrate my gradual return to the outside. Sadly, we learned right away, I have barely remastered the art of eating yet. We went to a tasteful chain Italian restaurant and I tried breaking the soft rolls into little pieces but no dice. Nothing would stay in my mouf! Everything just fell out, as confused as I was.

    To cope, later that afternoon, I stealth-read The Lovely Bones in the bookstore while my mom perused self-help books (her favorite)! Self-help is subjective.

    To add even less humor to the situation, I got overambitious and thought I could go tell some jokes right away that night, but ha! Jokes were on me. My stomach staged a Class III ambush to seek attention away from my mouth and rained down destruction and despair on my corpus for the next 48 hours. This included some uncomfortable moments the next day sitting in a two-hour long office meeting and trying to indicate with subtle eyebrow arches to the person next to me that the strange sounds emanating from me were totes my tummo, not my tusho, not that that did anything for our “on the rocks” friendship.

    So I had to bench myself for a widdle bit from real life. Eating has proved to be a bit of a slurpy adventure coated with nuisance powder. I can’t get much down except textured soups and yogurty deals, and quite a mess results regardless. I have permanent egg on my face.

    My tongue is basically on parole right now because it can’t come out that far and my mouth opens just enough to make attempts to haphazardly shove stuff in and hope for the best. I am basically a half-baby/half-old person right now. There’s my diet and then there’s the wit and wisdom and eye twinkles I have developed over time. Not to mention the constant crying, but I like that part.

    Ah well, as they say, stiff lower lip and all that! No, you’re right, I say that. Nobody else. Hup hoop!

    Found Footage

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    Hark! We’ve finally come upon the day before my tongue is released from captivity. Considering its two-week imprisonment behind bars, we can only surmise what lays in store for me, the well-meaning but restrained patron. Jacked up on a diet of revenge, pull ups, curls, and tats, the pink prince will break out in unfettered glory, perhaps disgusting and horrifying my surgeon and his nurse in the process with its size, ink-grained beliefs, and fury, but never apologizing, no, never that.

    Do let’s have a quick multimedia meander down memory cul-de-sac, shall we?

    http://www.viddler.com/player/bae6b5d4/

    I realized quite bemusedly to myself that I am going to miss this whole jaws wide shut saga of healing and hope, as trying as it could be at times. I became something of a misanthrope, only going out in public a requisite few times, once to a class that I just started taking, in which I used a doodle board to make a proper introduction of myself to everyone.

    Within my own abode, I became something of self-proclaimed royalty with exacting standards and unrelenting habits. I would make faces at my mother if she dared to eat those most tempting and textured items known as solid foods around me. I would often wear a towel bib, and self-medicate standing up with a silver spoon. I would devour books in one or two days, going through an entire library stack, and fitting in a movie or TV episode here or there to keep myself dabbling in other worlds. Or alternately, I would read the newspaper to stay (internally) relevant. I forgot to check my work email (though I had promised myself) to the point where my boss had to text me to relay a message. I rather enjoyed the effort of the communique.

    But I have also been turning quite sentimental, bawling behind my 3D glasses at Avatar and pining for my hospital bed and the consistent nurse pampering where drifting off to sleep is your most required calling.

    THINGS I WILL MISS or THINGS I HAVE LEARNED

  • the way soup dribbled onto clothing I had just washed or crusted on my chin with truly inhumane regard for my feelings

  • how brushing my teeth became more for show than anything practical (window washing)

  • the new fact acquired that poop seems to lose all its smelly qualities on a liquid diet (it needs to be documented) and the thoroughly unfortunate event of soiling my pants which occurred following a sad, sudden onset bout of diarrhea which persisted longer than was necessary (neither of these things will I miss, but an honest account is required)

  • how talking became secondary in any human interaction until I discovered tu-tu-tu-tu-tu could easily cover most of the emotional spectrum and then slightly later noted that I could be understood 200 percent better donning an efficacious British accent with hints of Africa in it

  • how parents acquire their old roles which you can quickly accept with a knee-jerk reaction as if you were hardly a grownup to ever begin with.

    • I may even have to spare a moment of nostalgia for my muscle spasms and mild bloody spittle.

    Here were some choice quotes from my caretakers during their time to shine, which they did most ably and with concerted, appreciated effort:

    Point/Counterpoint with the Parentals

    On Facebook (on two separate occasions)

    Mother: You’re on Facebook! That means you’re famous!

    Mother: I don’t have to register for Facebook to fill out this survey, do I? I don’t want my pretty photos all over the Internet.

    [Well, which is it, Mother?!]

    On Muscle Milk (on two separate occasions)

    Father: It’s Muscle Milk. It just sounds good.

    Mother: Muscle Milk. Nothing about that sound good.

    [Men and women for you, ladies and genteels!]

    Verdict: It’s no milkshake, but it’s not terrible.

    But, regardless of all the fun and the glamour I must put behind me and simply reflect back upon through treasured keepsakes such as a drool rag and antibiotic lip ointment, my building excitement for my first “outta jaws jail” meal of mashed potatoes and ravioli cut into teeny-tiny pieces is through the roof and to the moon. And that is one promise that is not fueled by pain meds.

    Manifest Destiny’s Child

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    (If you liked the title, then maybe you shoulda put a ring on it!)

    So predictably, my insurance situation is all crazed and confused as pertaining to JAWS (what I’ve taken to calling my upcoming jaw surgery, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun).

    To the point where I think I am going to make a vision board to help expedite my destiny, or as my friend Molly puts it, “put in an order with the universe’s celestial catalog.”

    Envisioning magazine pics!
    photo courtesy of Flickr and deb_roby

    So far I’m thinking pictures of hospitals and maybe a few thumbnails of some Crest smiles. Maybe a head gear for fun. A red lip couch, why not?

    It’s my life! I might also include a blender because gosh knows I will need one of those once my teeth become prisoners wired shut in my own mouf!

    Tear smoothie, anybloody?

    Thanks to the Internet…

    MY VIRTUAL VISION BOARD

    Alright, I did my part. Now I just need to get hold of a member services representative and see what’s what. Also, finding an unclaimed briefcase of money wouldn’t hurt neither.