Well I was back at the Longview Corporate Center yesterday for a followup visit.  They wanted to check me out after last week's oral surgery.  The doctor confirmed that it was normal for me to still have swelling and soreness a week later.  He said it would take awhile to recover.

But on the upside, he said that it looked like I was healing up nicely.  I thought he was going to remove the stitches today, but he said that they were dissolving stitches and we would just let them fall out on their own.  For the past week I've had to keep the dentures in all the time (even when sleeping), the doctor said it was necessary to stretch out the tissue.  But now he has reversed those instructions and told me to take them out as often as possible.  Confusing business this.

Personally?  I'd really like to get through this so I can have my permanent set of dentures made.  I was hoping to get that done before my birthday in October.  Oh well, at least it doesn't hurt as bad as it did last week, and I'm starting to chew a little bit again.  Hopefully in another week or two I'll be back to full strength.

I couldn't go to work today... nor could I shoot any pictures or do much of anything because I had oral surgery yesterday.

This shot was taken with my 1.3 megapixel VerizonLG camera phone yesterday after the surgery which took about 90 minutes.  I felt as awful as I look here...  doped out of my skull and with bloody spatter on my cheeks and chin.  Yechhh.

I'm on percosets right now and feeling pretty crappy.  My face is very sore.

You may or may not know that I had 19 teeth removed back in May and was fitted with dentures.  Unfortunately as a result of that surgery I ended up with a fistula in my right upper jaw that went up into my sinus cavity.  As a result unless I was careful, there would be communication between my mouth and sinuses of food or fluids.  I discovered this one morning when Listerine came out my nose while I was washing my mouth.  (Ow!) 

We had hoped the fistula would close itself over time, but it didn't happen.  So yesterday once they knocked me out, they sliced open a flap of gum tissue, laid it across the opening of the fistula and stitched it down.

I haven't taken the dentures out since, it's just too sore, but they are discolored so I know they are full of blood and need to be cleaned soon.  I'm nervous about removing them because I am so sore and the surgeon said I am only allowed to take them out for short periods--I can't take them out when I sleep for a week.

I also can't bend down low for any reason or my gums start to throb.  So this has been fairly rough and it has been impossible for me to do any shooting today.  I might try to do some still life later if I can, but I wouldn't expect anything today.