A Retrospective: The Life of a Recent Jaw Surgery Patient

I got double jaw surgery at the beginning of September and I wanted to write a blog post in the hopes that some other person who is about to undergo jaw surgery or has just had it done may benefit from my experience.  There is not a lot of information about what foods you can or can't eat after jaw surgery and I found a few sites from people who had their wisdom teeth removed and had to be on a soft food diet for a week.  Needless to say I felt very little pity for the wisdom teeth people. You won't get tired of milkshakes and oatmeal in a week, but 1-2 months is a different matter. 

I've compiled a list of foods I ate/drank after my jaw surgery (divided into stages) and some other helpful jaw surgery tips.  I hope you enjoy:


Helpful things to have after jaw surgery:

• A very nice blender (I stole my mom’s Ninja blender and it is amazing!)

• An infant toothbrush (the faster you can brush the inside of your mouth the happier you will be). Try to find one that has the narrowest plastic head.

• A very tiny spoon that has a thin bowl (think ice cream sample spoon since even infant spoons were too thick initially)

• An adult sized bib or many towels (you will drool and drop food all over yourself so I made a large bib that could be wiped down after each meal)
• Boxes of soft facial tissues (see the above reference to drool and you will also have nosebleeds if you move around too much)

• Dimetapp (to clear the sinus congestion and it doesn’t taste as bad as the other stuff)

• Listerine (since you can’t brush the inside of your mouth or your tongue for a long time)

• A notebook and pen or a small dry erase board so you can communicate when your jaw is banded shut. There are also websites (naturalreader.com) where you can type and it will speak for you.

• Ice packs and heat packs (my ice machine had a hard time keeping up with my demands for ice for my face)

Helpful Tips:

• Once the rubber bands have been removed after surgery, try to drink from a cup as soon as possible.  You may need to practice in front of a mirror over a sink since it will be messy but it is much easier to get enough nutrition from a cup than using the syringe.

• The liquid pain medicine tastes disgusting and it made me gag (gagging is not good when your mouth is clamped shut) so I dealt with the pain and when the rubber bands came off I asked for the tablet pain pills that I could feed into the tiny opening of my mouth and swallow them with water.

• Ask for the antibiotic in pill form (the capsule can be broken up and mixed with water and that tastes better than the nasty flavoring inside the liquid antibiotic. The flavor was some sort of tropical melon concoction and it was gross)

• Stay in the hospital as long as possible: they pump you full of wonderful antibiotics (ie you don’t have to take the nasty stuff by mouth), intravenous nutrition (I dropped 11 pounds in the 7 days after my surgery so IV food is highly recommended), and pain drugs.  They also have the wonderful suction tube to clear out all the phlegm and excess icky stuff inside your mouth and throat. 

• You will need to eat about every three hours when you are on a liquid diet since your body finds it hard to absorb as much nutrition. Try to supplement the liquids with a soluble fiber supplement (like benefiber) to try to keep your intestines happy.

• You will not start to feel human or up to daily tasks for at least a week. I basically laid in bed shaking from malnutrition and dehydration for a week until I figured out how to use a cup and could get enough sustenance, but I was still weak for at least another week.

Liquid Foods:

• Peanut butter and chocolate milkshake

• 3 scoops of chocolate ice cream (I used Blue Bell Dutch Chocolate)

• ⅓ cup milk chocolate carnation instant breakfast

• 1 really big spoonful of creamy peanut butter

• cover it 50% with vanilla almond milk

• cover it the rest of the way with 1% milk

• Optional: 1 scoop of plain or vanilla greek yogurt (it makes it taste slightly sour but it increases the protein content)

• Blend until smooth

• Strawberry Milkshake

• 3 scoop of vanilla ice cream

• 1 packet of strawberry carnation instant breakfast

• a small handful of frozen strawberries

• cover it 50% with vanilla almond milk

• cover it the rest of the way with 1% milk

• Optional: add in two big spoonfuls of creamy peanut butter to make a PB&J shake

• Optional: 1 scoop of plain or vanilla greek yogurt (it makes it taste slightly sour but it increases the protein content)

• Blend until smooth

• Blueberry Milkshake (warning: this like to get stuck in your braces but it is delicious)

• 3 scoop of vanilla ice cream

• 1 packet of vanilla carnation instant breakfast

• a large handful of frozen blueberries

• cover it 50% with vanilla almond milk

• cover it the rest of the way with 1% milk

• Optional: 1 scoop of plain or vanilla greek yogurt (it makes it taste slightly sour but it increases the protein content)

• Blend until smooth

• Other delicious milkshakes-- be creative (I contemplated a maple and bacon milkshake but it seemed a waste of good bacon to only use the grease and not the bacon itself)

• Apple Juice (I would stir in some Benefiber before drinking it)

• Boost drinks  (get the Boost Plus since it has more calories)

• Ensure drinks (get the Ensure Plus since it has more calories)
• Carnation Instant Breakfast Shakes

• Sprite, ginger ale, other sugary sodas (if you are on a liquid diet for an extended period of time there is no need to worry about sugar content since you are trying to consume as many calories as possible to maintain your energy)
• Protein Shakes (I blended the protein powders with milk, almond milk, and greek yogurt to make them even more nutritional)

• WARNING: There are drinks that won’t taste very good until you can drink from a cup because all your sweet taste receptors are on the front of your tongue:

• Gatorade

• Grape Juice

• Orange Juice ? (I never tried to drink it since I don’t like it in the first place but it is pretty acidic)
• Other drinks with acidic or bitter undertones

Really Soft Foods: Easy to eat when the splint is still in your mouth and you can’t open very wide (weeks 2-4)

• Pudding (there are many flavor options to choose from and my personal favorites were butterscotch, chocolate caramel, and ice cream sandwich)

• pasta alfredo (I over-cooked rotini pasta and then covered it in sauce. I had to feed the rotini in one by one with my fingers and mash them gently with my lower teeth and the splint before swallowing)

• Mashed Potatoes

• Oatmeal (explore your flavor choices to break up the monotony)

• Cream of Wheat (I mixed in sugar and cinnamon and added 1 TBSP of heavy cream to richen it up)

• Grits

• Macaroni and cheese

• Applesauce

• Canned peaches

• Canned pears

• Canned pineapple (chunks or bits)

• Eggs

Soft Foods: After the splint is out and you can open wider (at least 1.5 finger widths)

• All the foods on the previous list

• Angel hair pasta with vegetable spaghetti sauce  (Ragu Garden Combination is my favorite)

• Well cooked baked potato topped with chili (you can mash any large chunks in the chili with a fork before eating it and I used Hormel Chili with beans)

• Crustless quiches (I made a broccoli (florets only, stems are too hard) and cauliflower quiche and it was so good to have something savory after being on the liquid/pudding diet for a month)

• Soups with soft chunks:

• Ramen noodles

• Progresso Chicken Corn Chowder (the chunks were pretty sizeable but still pretty soft)

• Progresso Chicken Pot Pie

• Campbell Chicken and Rice

• Etc (I’m not big on soup so I haven’t really explored all the options out there)

• Note: avoid soups with bacon chunks inside since bacon is hard, bacon flavored is alright

• Baked beans (avoid the ones with bacon chunks mixed in)

• Pancakes and crepes (make sure the filling of the crepe is soft too, such as nutella, overcooked veggies, lemon juice with sugar, jellies. Make sure to cut off the bites with a fork before eating, no tearing with your mouth!)
• Nutrigrain bars (put small pieces into your mouth)

• Muffins (no nuts or other hard additions)

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich (use creamy peanut butter and remove the crust. Tear off pieces of sandwich to put into your mouth)

• Oreos after being thoroughly soaked in milk

• Corn or Rice Chex cereal soaked in milk (let the cereal soak a few minutes to soften up, other cereals are too thick so they are still crunchy in the middle)

• Canned vegetables (peas, corn, green beans)

• Doughnuts (tear off small pieces to eat)

• Pizza ( My oral surgeon said I could eat pizza if the crust and toppings were soft and I used a knife and fork to cut off pieces)

• Fried rice (and other rice dishes)

• Lo Mein (and other soft noodles)

• Chicken Pot Pie (I ate the Stouffer’s brand)

Note: A lot of foods can be made softer by overcooking it or by patiently mashing it up with a fork before eating it or just picking off/out the hard parts

Any more suggestions? Post in the comment section

Wreath #3

Here is the my third and final wreath.  I'm glad that its over with but they were fun to make.

My Sunday Project: Wreath #2

So I spent FOREVER wrapping this second wreath in yarn.  I now know that it is better to shell out the extra $1.50 for the yarn in order to save 1.5 hours of my life wrapping the wreath in skinny, thin yarn. Luckily, I have Netflix so I wasn't bored out of my mind during the process.  After it was wrapped, my friend Daniel came over and I enlisted his help. I made the pretty flowers while he wrapped the third wreath in pink yarn (of course I had to get the guy to use the pink yarn) as my slave.  We watched the Christmas Devotional and chatted about all sorts of stuff. So all in all wreath #2 went pretty fast and I am pleased with the results. Here is a picture of it:

Wreath #3 will be posted when it is finished. Hopefully it will be finished quickly since it is already wrapped thanks to the awesome Daniel (he was a trooper and better at wrapping than I was since I have a tendency to get impatient).

Post #3: A year later

So I remember how I was all excited about starting a blog, but I was concerned about my ability to actually remember to write in it?  Yeah, that was a justified fear.  It's been about 14 months and I've come full circle since I am once again taking the same self-defense class (it's always good to refresh) that I took last year and I am still stuck in Core Course since I volunteered to tutor the first year graduate students. Don't let that fool you, I have made some progress in the past year.  For example, I have taken up running as a hobby/form-of-torture and I will be running my first ever 5K in two weeks!  Hopefully I won't die or vomit either would be horrendous.  I have also started pole dancing, but not because I need to make extra money because my graduate school stipend is small. It's purely for recreational/exercise reasons.  It's super fun and I've been enjoying getting stronger and more skilled every day.  I could do without all the bruises though. My pole dancing instructor seems dead set on getting me spray tanned at some point.  I don't think she can comprehend that someone might actually want to be fair skinned.

Outside of my new exercise regime, I have also fallen prey to the allure of Pinterest.  It's an addicting website where you can see all sorts of craft, sewing, decorating, cooking, etc ideas.  Usually you just pin all this cool stuff that you find and never actually do any of it, but sometimes you might just actually make one of the things you find.  So far I have made braided t-shirt headbands, a large framed dry-erase board, a beaded headband, a lace headband, and my crowning achievement has been a yarn wreath (picture is below). I will admit the main reason for this blog post was so I could post a picture of my beautiful wreath and then pin it on Pinterest since Pinterest won't let you pin from Facebook :(  I am making three wreaths.  Two of them will go to my ward's Christmas Auction that we have to raise money for a disadvantaged family and one of them will live on my apartment door.  I'm not sure which one I want to keep, I will have to finish them all before I make my decision, but here is the first one:

My First Wreath!

In my school work, I joined a lab and I just selected my Thesis Committee and I only have one more semester of classes before I am done for the rest of my life!  Hopefully, I will stay focused on passing my qualifying exam and not get distracted by random stuff.

I'll post the other wreaths and possible the headbands later!

Self Defense Class

So today was the last and most intense day of the self-defense class I've been taking over the past two weeks.  We had "Simulation Day", which is where we get all padded up (in brand new pads no less, yay for increased funding) and we get attacked by two men (only one is every attacking you at one time) and we have to defend ourselves and run to safety.

We had four simulations total, and the first one was really easy and I was thinking to myself, "Self, you have got this, you just got away from a 250 pound man.  You are awesome!"  I did the moves, I was supposed to and got away.  Yay for sweet freedom.

Second simulation, the two attackers are crowding me and all of a sudden this guy is totally in my bubble and crowding me and everything I learned from class flew out of my head. My response to being grabbed by a big intimidating man? Punch anywhere on his head, and knee him for all that I'm worth.  It worked, but I wasn't feeling so sure of myself.

The third simulation, was the same as the second, but we had a fellow classmate fighting with us, and about the same thing happened.

The fourth simulation  was the worst, because I had to close my eyes while the attackers insulted me and bumped against me and I couldn't fight back until they had me on the ground (stupid unrealistic rules).  I've decided that punching is my best weapon.

So it was pretty intense and scary, but I feel more capable of defending myself now. 

There is this small, very quiet, Asian girl in this class and coming up to the fourth simulation, she was really nervous so she asked me to give her a pep talk (I'm pretty good with pep talks).  So I told her all the usual stuff about how it will be fine, it's only a few minutes (max three minutes), but I told her that she can unleash the Asian Fury.  And from what I heard through the door and from the instructors after the class, she did indeed release the Asian Fury.  I'll get to a see a video of it next week (sadly, I can't share the video here because the techniques we learn are supposed to be secret so men don't find out about them, we don't need to let the enemy know our awesome female self-defense moves).  I'll also get to see a video of my fights, which is good because the adrenaline rush has basically erased my memory of it except for a few flashes. 

The biggest surprise was that I won the "Silver Whistle Award" which is given to one student in the class that the instructors felt did really well.  So I feel pretty awesome, especially since there were some really tough, "hell hath no fury" women in the class with me.

Sadly this last picture is not the closest Troy and Tony, my instructors, got to each other.  When they were demonstrating for us how to get an attacker off of you if you are on the ground, they were MUCH closer...awkwardly closer.

Now that self-defense class is over, I'll need to go back to my normal exercise routine (my hamstrings still hurt from all the kicking we did in class).  So back to peaceful yoga and the elliptical, but most exciting of all:  I found a tennis court near my apartment that has a practice wall.  I love practice walls because it means I can play tennis whenever I want to and without needing to find a partner.  Joy!!!! That is on my to-do list for Saturday. My wishful thinking (meaning that this will never happen) to-do list includes, practicing the piano, practicing the guitar, and actually reviewing my lecture notes after class. I've decided to look at this positively by saying that if I never cross these off my to-do list than I will always have something to do.

Oh, and I finally went to the Dallas library (it took six weeks, which in Lacy Book Time is three years), but I've got it figured out. But now that I have books my productivity has sharply decreased.  I wish there was a way to read a book and study at the same time. 

My next test is in a 11 days so back to diligently studying I go. Goodbye, pretty library, I will come to you soon.  October 19th to be exact.  Don't pine for me too much, but know that I will be pining for you too.

My First Post

Hello World!!!!

I've always been really jealous of my friends who have fun, quirky blogs so I thought that I too might try to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat.  I have serious doubts as to whether my blog will be fun or quirky, but at least it will be a good way for all my friends to keep up with me.  It also has the added benefit of making me seem less "stalkery" when I read their blogs.

I do have some serious doubts as to my ability to actually maintain a blog since my journal writing attempts have averaged out at about one entry every three years.  Does facebook count as a journal?  I feel like it should because of all the status updates, but I may be trying to justify my complete lack of journal writing dedication.  My little sister, Xan, is amazing at writing in her journal and taking picture, and just generally being amazing.  But she's blonde, so it all balances it out in the end.

So, one thing I discovered in trying to set up this blog is that it is hard to come up with a blog name.  There's a lot of pressure to come up with a fun name that isn't cheesy.  I'm not sure I succeeded in this attempt, but I like it. So the blog is called "The Life Cycles of Lacy" Why you may ask?
1) My life is going through a lot of changes right now with moving to Texas from North Carolina and with starting graduate school (don't know what I was thinking when I made that decision) so the "Life Cycles" (emphasis on the plural) made sense.
2)  I'm getting my PhD in biomedical science so "Life Cycle" seemed apropo to represent my interest in science.
3) All the other ideas I had seemed vain, cheesy, or too alliterated(?)

So what is going on in my life right now?
On the school front:
I am almost smack dab in the middle of Core Course, which is the general science class that my graduate program makes every student take to (a) torture us or (b) make sure we have knowledge.  The school claims B is the reason, but I think it's A.  Our second exam is coming up in the very near future, and I can only hope it goes better than the first exam.  On the first exam, our teacher accidentally emailed the whole class, the exam plus the answer key the weekend before the test.  That was definitely an "Oh Crap" moment for our professor.  So the teachers weren't sure if we were going to have the exam on Monday.

My coping mechanism to exam stress:  Free fall 120 ft "for fun" (video hopefully will be included). There was some definite peer pressure involved in getting me to do this "Zero Gravity" activity.  I just think the name "Zero Gravity" is very misleading because let me tell you I was experiencing every bit of gravity while I was falling.  Now if  I was given the opportunity to get on a micro-gravity plane, I would totally do it

Microgravity Video

On the home front:
My dad celebrated his 57th birthday in September and since 57 is my favorite number (thanks to the cartoon "Doug"), I know that this year will be amazing for him.

On the Random Front:
I'm taking a self-defense class and learning some pretty cool moves.  So beware guys: I know how to defend myself and hurt you.  You've been warned... We are coming up on Simulation Day where we actually fight men that have been hired to attack us.  I'm scared/pumped. I also learned that I lack the necessary leg strength to get off the ground without using my hands.  My attempts usually end with me stalled half-way up and falling back down or if by some miracle I actually make it standing, I stumble around trying to find my balance.  Not the safest situation, but pretty hilarious to watch.

So all in all, I'm sometimes enjoying my time in Texas, all the time missing North Carolina, and sometimes missing Georgia.

That's about it for now.  Thanks for reading!!! (and I hope you think I have the makings of a fun, quirky blogger)