After finally finishing exams, most people are either travelling, visiting their families at home, or heading out to the bar every night for a well-deserved break. Unfortunately, I’ve just been doing a lot of this:
Lying on the couch icing my swollen face and looking pathetic. Being in a program where I’m perpetually in classes or working made it really difficult to schedule any kind of procedure with a recovery period, but after months of waiting and rescheduling, on Monday I was finally able to get a dental surgery (gingival graft) that I’ve been needing for a looong time. I’m really glad I was finally able to get it done, but I think I’ll be even more glad when everything’s all healed up and I don’t have a protective piece of pink putty over the bottom half of my teeth.
Although I haven’t had too much pain and the only area badly affected is my lower front teeth, it still makes eating a little difficult. Surprisingly it’s not the firmness of food that’s as much of a problem as the size – anything that’s really large or needs to be bit into smaller pieces is out. So sandwiches, pizza, long pasta, popsicles… all no-goes.
I had a gift card for Fiddleheads (a local health food store) from last Christmas, so I’ve been using it to get smoothies for breakfast. This one of called “The Fiddlehead” and is made with rice milk, banana, frozen yogurt, proteins+, greens+, pistachios and coffee beans.
Quick and easy-to-eat lunches like pear and old cheddar are also surprisingly easy to eat. It’s not as pretty when everything is cut up into tiny cubes, but it still tastes the same!
Dinner has mostly been soup, but after two days of this I was ready for something I could chew at least a little. After 6 hours in a slow cooker, the pork was more than soft enough to handle, and the coleslaw (recipe coming tomorrow!) was also in small enough pieces that it wasn’t too much of a hassle. Unfortunately the corn muffins were really dry and hard to eat, even broken into little pieces. I used a recipe I found online that got great reviews, but I must have done something wrong because they were like little bricks. I guess you can’t win them all!
And chocolate mousse for a typical dessert. I would say ice cream as well, but that hasn’t really been restricted to dessert – more of a “whenever I want to eat something easy” snack, haha.
After three days the swelling has gone down substantially and I’m almost ready to venture into public again, but even so I think a few days of rest at home have been good after weeks of no sleep and high stress. Onwards and upwards from here!
