1 week follow-up

My dentist uses purple latex gloves. Every time she puts on a new pair I giggle to myself in my head because they remind me of Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. It's nice to have a reminder of something happy in an otherwise bleak, sanitized setting.

Today I went for a checkup to see how my healing has been progressing over the last week. The site is still tender when poked at, so she had to use a topical anesthetic on it before stretching my lip out far enough to get a good look. Progress is good but, as expected, I haven't been able to keep it as clean as we would like. So Fatema used a giant plastic syringe to squirt saline into the crevices and clear them out. She also gave me a couple to take home and do the same, which will make my twice-daily teeth cleaning routine a bit more interesting. I can use them to squirt the prescription mouthwash as well, which is now only needed on the surgery site. Since it would stain my other teeth, I've been cleared to go back to brushing and flossing the rest of my mouth and only using the mouthwash on the affected site.

Next week she wants to clean it for me again, and the week after that the stitches will come out. Until then, and perhaps longer, I'm doing all of my chewing on the left side of my mouth. I have at least moved on from just pudding and ice cream, but they're still the easiest thing to eat by far. I can eat real food if I cut it into very tiny pieces first, but it takes so long it doesn't always seem worth the effort. So on the way home I stocked up on more pudding. Shaw's must have known my plans, because it was still on sale--12 pudding cups for $3!

It will probably be next summer before I can bite directly into an apple again, and when that day comes I'm going to go all Barbossa on it.

-Kim