Better now? Yes. Fine? No. Well? No. Getting there. Slowly. So slowly that it is an exercise in not wanting what I don’t have. It took me fifteen months to become as sick as I was, and it required the past week to really understand the level of sick that it was. Funny how that goes. Not so funny, is how sloooooooooooooooooooooooowly I’m improving. But what can you do? But to go with it. So I am.
What do I have now? The abiity to knit on the bus. The ability to smell. The ability to lie down.
What am I still? Weak. Easily tired. Sore. Laden with still-there dissolvable stitches. Stuck in stockinette land.
What have I lost? Twelve pieces of metal. Nine screws, two plates, and a wayward piece of wire that no one knew was there. Sadly, the wire can’t be blamed for my infunktionage, because I was sick for fifteen months, not a decade. Some of the screws are bloody, and there’s some infection on a couple screws and one plate – there’s nothing like visual proof, vindication even, of your very own infected metal.
I’ll never wash them. I’m not sure how long I’ll hang onto them, but for the now, they stay with me.
Because they’re pieces of me, pieces of my body, pieces of my life.
Every day for nine years nine months and four days, I felt these plates, these screws, in my upper jaw. They were always there, a part of the everyday experience. I knew they were there before I was told I had the plates.
And I kind of miss them. Up until I became sick, they didn’t hurt, they were just always there. And I still have them on the left side, but I was always aware of the right plates more. and right now, I’m aware of their absence more than I am of the presence on the left… twisted.
My smile, by the way, is broken.
I can’t smile at all. My left side never recovered from the accident and the first surgery, and I have little use of it, by which I mean, “I’m amazed people never notice, because I can’t really do much with that side at all.” Because? It’s true. Zero frown ability, a tiny bit of upward motion, little sensation, and definitely no way I can chew or smile on that side. My right side has a little more upward motion, no downward motion, and don’t talk to me about solid food.
I wish people wouldn’t say, it’ll get better, you’ll get it all back, because you don’t know that. You don’t know if it will. It never did for my left. I’m not saying I’m upset or worred or obsessed… just saying. I know the costs. I (despite my stunning impatience and crabbiness in the recent past) know how long it takes, and know how sometimes it just doesn’t gel.
But for now? It amuses me that my smile is broken.
