POST OP. DAY 3: THE REALITY SETS IN

I have heard anecdotal tales of days like this.

I have had very little sleep this past few days but have been wide awake and attentive. Perhaps it's the extra oxygen I have been given?

I have had no extra drugs beyond paracetamol and my usual blood-pressure pills.

The anaesthetic was all about sleep!

Perhaps it was just euphoria carrying me along? It was good whatever it was.

Morning day three.

I have been woken for my DVT prevention injection at 7am and I feel so tired still after seven hours of sleep. I have no pain but the record playing in my head has a stuck needle and it just repeats itself constantly over and over again! I can't get the mold into my other ear, it is too tight. So I decide to leave it out today so that I do not get pressure sores to make life difficult later when I might be more desperate for it. I have a minor vague tooth ache in an upper tooth which I cannot identify, it has no relationship with my mouth. It must be the facial nerve again. 

I have taken another hour in bed but feel I must get up for a visitor coming for breakfast and to help in my garden. I must avoid bending, lifting and carrying heavy things for a while. The first thing I notice is that I am quickly into my routine in my own familiar kitchen but I get a rude awakening when I realise I have no sounds coming in and no awareness of anything or anyone around me. I have dropped a knife on the floor and I stand on it, then I notice it's there! I turn from the cooker with a hot pan and right at my elbow is my son but I didn't know he was even in the room. He was last seen working in the garden a few minutes ago. I am being myself but not in my usual state of profound deafness where I can ignore things I hear vaguely or ask for repeats of things I didn't quite catch. This is total deafness on all sides. 

I now have good movement in my neck and I am spontaneously using it with only minor discomfort. I have had my pain relief anyway, it seems to keep things low key and removes distraction. With the increased head movement I find my eyes are struggling a bit to keep up with me. I found myself at the top of the stairs feeling lightheaded and flushed holding on to the banister rail. Talking is uncomfortable if I do it for too long and I still cannot open my mouth fully, it objects at the joint when It's being stretched open to take a normal sized bite. Talking also dries up my saliva still which is otherwise flowing well now. It just tastes awful, it's metallic and it feels as if my mouth has been rinsed in cleaning fluid! That stuff we don't notice as it comes and goes through the day is very off-putting when you are constantly aware of it. It feels as if it is dripping into my mouth all the time rather than just being secreted gently and swallowed automatically. 

 

This is all to do with the side effects of the facial nerve interference from swelling etc. and the movement of my jaw through the outside bruising and tension in the tissues when I speak and eat. During the operation the nerve is located and protected from direct damage. Anatomically it is only a centimetre away from the surgery. A facial nerve palsy is a very unpleasant permanent disability to have.

On the subject of speaking. I am getting all my communications written down for me with help from lip reading. I thought I was good but this total dependence on it shows how hard it is to cope with the necessary concentration levels. It gives me head aches and eye strain even in these small doses. I sympathise with those who live with this all their lives. Another odd thing is that because I cannot hear my own voice I have responded to the written messages by writing my replies. But I can speak! why do I feel the need to do this?

No wonder deaf children need speech therapy and now I understand why Alexander Graham Bell and his father were so busy with teaching elocution. 

It was a good breakfast. Exhausting to eat it but at least I could now. The provocation of so much jaw work has made me uncomfortable again with a dull anonymous tooth ache and increased tinnitus. I feel tired and fall asleep. When I wake my son has gone, he didn't want to wake me on his way home. Because I never saw him go I had no idea he was not still in the garden. Only half a day and I am beginning to feel the strain of my dislocation from the world. I relate to Prof. Ramsdell and his psychological work with otherwise healthy young men suddenly deafened in WW2. That expression they used was "the world seems dead!"  and I can see exactly what they meant and how it must have affected them with such sudden changes. From a sense of mental hyper-awareness to avoid being killed and then an explosion that takes away all ability to be aware of what is coming up behind you. Thinking that at any moment someone is going to shoot you and you can't hear them coming! No wonder they needed psychiatric help and thank goodness he recognised it.

Then something very strange happened to me.

Another short nap during the afternoon seems to have helped me get back on track.
I sat down to write my blog and looked through my notes and the memories flowed through them. I was overcome with waves of emotion with tears flowing down my face!
I couldn't help it, something just welled up inside me and it burst out. 

You will get nothing more out of me today.

Just a thought or an image sets me off ........

(typed the next day with less spelling mistakes)