I'm a chipmunk... just not sure which one!

Well, it's been several days since surgery and simply put I feel terrible.

Cory stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday to help me and that was awesome. A good perk of being ahead on the farm during harvest.

I was doing pretty good up til about Sunday when my swelling started to get worse and the bruises took on some colour. My mouth is pretty stiff and sore and I think I look like a chipmunk. I totally don't look like me, I look different... weird.

I spent most of yesterday doing not very much. I rested and slept most of the day and kept cool in the basement. Today has been pretty much the same thing, I've been bored out of my head but there's not much else I can do about that. I've been reading online, searching out recipes and watching a little tv - yep, sounds about as boring as ever, huh.

I'm thinking about canning... yep, sounds exciting huh? Apple pie fillilng, jam etc etc.... So, perhaps we'll be out picking fruit this weekend! :)

Anyway, that's about the height of it. I'm scheduled to see Dr Johnson for a follow up next week on Wednesday, unless the swelling and pain doesn't go away, in which case I'll see him sooner...

Harvest

Harvest is an especially beautiful time of year in Oregon. There is so much to see, so many textures, colours and the landscapes are just highlighted by the farm machinery and all the activity buzzing around.
I couldn't help but try to capture this.

Mooooooo

Cows are fun subjects to photograph. I didn't have much time to snap these photos before they got freaked out and started a stampede.... nope, I'm not kidding - just very thankful they were runing in the opposite direction!

Some recent photos (photo heavy)

I have always loved to take photos - and as you can tell, sometimes my posts are a little photo heavy (sorry).

I've really been enjoying taking photos in and around the farm and where we live this summer... here's a few of my favs :)

No Surprises

This is from an email I sent to some friends and family members yesterday afternoon after surgery - As you can read, there were no surprises and everything went by the book.
My sleep was restless last night but I am taking it easy today and Cory's Dad told him to stay home with me too, which is awesome. It's nice having him here to take care of me :)

----------------
12th Aug at 17:21
Everything went well this morning. Last night I was very anxious as I went to bed but I woke up this morning filled with peace and the nerves had reduce substantially. (I didn't even cry as we drove to the appointment - and I'm telling ya, that is a first).

Dr Johnson performed the surgery expertly. He reported that the cyst was large but that they were able to clean it all out nicely and graft the site with bottle-bone. He also removed some tissue underneath a 1st molar on my lower jaw - it looked like it was forming a cyst there and they didn't want to take any chances. Thankfully we didn't need to graft that site and hopefully it will heal well by itself. The cyst in this site was so close in proximity to the other cyst there that it doesn't appear to be anything to worry about. They have sent the cyst tissue to OSHU for biopsy and I will receive the results in 2 weeks. Dr Johnson is 99% sure it's the same type of cyst we found on the upper jaw and should be nothing to cause further concern.

Everything went so smoothly, my Doctor couldn't have wished for anything to go any better - this is also a first for my surgeries and I am very thankful!

I'm in a fair amount of pain right at the moment but I have some pain killers that I will use tonight if necessary and they already gave me some meds through my IV that should keep the swelling and bruising to a minimum. Movement in my lower jaw is very restricted at the moment but I'm doing good & Cory is doing a great job of taking care of me.

D-Day tomorrow

I know I've been bad at writing, I've been both busy and not really in the best of moods, so I figured it would be smart to not write while that's the case. It'd only end up with short sharp posts anyway! ha!

So, tomorrow is D-Day for me. I will be having my latest maxillofacial surgery. I was scheduled to have two implants placed tomorrow, two bone grafts (one upper & one lower), a cyst removed and teeth pulled but it turns out that we have had a change of direction.

The 3D scan showed that I do not in fact have enough bone in the upper site to hold the Ti implants. The bone has reabsorbed into my body and is now too thin to hold the implants. That was a major blow that I hadn't really expected to hear. I thought we were doing really good with the bone strength up there.
The other thing that changed the game plan was the position of the canines. I need to have them moved a little so that the implants can go into exactly the correct spot. Ugh.

So the treatment plan has changed. We will be leaving the implants until the end of orthodontic work which will be in about 30 months (+/-). Tomorrow we will remove the lower incisor (for ortho) and a lower molar and also they will remove the cyst that has grown in my lower jaw at the front, they will also bone graft the site at that time.

I'm hoping it will not mean a loss of nerves to the teeth above the cyst, but it's a risk we have to play with.

In approx 6 weeks I should be good to go into ortho and get that ball rolling. We're going to have to keep a really close eye on the upper bone grafted site to make sure that the bone loss there doesn't get too much worse, and if it does it means dropping implants during ortho to stop resorption and save what they can. If everything goes to plan, after ortho I will have one final surgery (which I didn't expect... ) which will place an autograft - a block of bone taken from my own body and placed in the site - and also a Xenogenic graft which is a block of bovine bone.
I will have a soft tissue graft at that time and the implants placed. It sounds like a lot, well, it is a lot but I'm really trying to not worry about that right now. I'm just trying to keep stress free and rested for surgery tomorrow and worry about each procedure as it comes up.

I'm just very thankful for good doctors, who know exactly what they're doing and have a vision in mind. They are fighting for the very best for me in this situation, so that's definitely something to be glad about.

Hummmmm.... Pie

Our neighbours (and good friends) are having a big party on Saturday evening in celebration of their daughter's recently wedding that took place in beautiful Mexico. They have been planning, prepping and working so hard for months on end to get their place ready for this big day - it looks amazing - and now it's just a couple days away (YIKES)!

So, we offered to help them out with whatever we could and I somehow also volunteered to make pies, 3 of them to be precise. It's not like I didn't have anything else to do, far from it, but they wanted home made pies for dessert and the number of people who are coming quickly jumped from 65 adults to just a handful shy of 200... they were really short on pie and I like to bake... I just made sense to me that I'd do my bit!

All that aside yesterday I had grand plans of cleaning our house and getting all organised and everything ship shape in preparation for my surgery next week, because I knew I wouldn't have any time this weekend and didn't want a mad rush on Monday & Tuesday.

Well, I should start by saying that didn't exactly happen... ok, that didn't happen at all. But I did do a few things around the house in the morning before my afternoon got a little crazy.

I decided that I needed to do a trial run of one of the pies that I would be making for the weekend. It is a recipe that was originally Cory's Mammaw's (Mother's mother). She gave it to Cory's Grandmother (Father's mother) who changed it a little, and then it was given to me by Cory's Mom... (are you still with me? I know, that's a lot of women and mothers, but it's really simple... keep up!).

I seem to have a habit of not really being able to make a recipe exactly as it is written, even if I have tasted the recipe and it seems perfect, there's always a little something here and there that I want to change... this wasn't any different. But since it would be fed to people other than Cory & I it needed testing, I didn't want to be embarrassed by showing up with a monstrosity!

So, I nipped to the store, grabbed a few things I needed and hurried home... Cornstarch sometimes makes me nervous - sometimes it can get messy when you're trying to make syrupy goodness and instead it just turns into lumpy gross yuckiness.

Thankfully this seemed to go smoothly, my syrupy goodness was mixed and was cooling before I added it to the pie crust.

In the middle of the cooling time, and way before it was ready to go hubbie called... He'd gotten a flat tyre about 15 mins from here and needed me to come get him, take him to go get a replacement and then bring him back to change the tyre.

So, I decided that it was now or never with the syrupy goodness I had so proudly mixed. I had no idea how long I would be gone and just had a feeling it would be set in the jug by the time I got back if I left it, so I took the plunge and quickly poured a little on the crust. I knew it was too hot but I carried on.
I added the fruit - yummy raspberries and then hurriedly poured the rest of the mixture on top. I threw it in the refrigerator, grabbed a couple berries as a to-go snack, my keys and handbag and jumped in the truck!

Last night we ended up eating out (read: fast food - but decent fast food, I will say) and by the time we got home neither of us were really up for pie... so tonight we;re going to try it. I hope it's ok!

(As you can see from the photo it has a couple bubbles which I guess are from just throwing the berries in, and then pouring the filling over top but not doing anything else)

I guess I'm going to whip up an apple cake (cleverly disguised as pie) and an English style apple and clove pie for the party, so at least those two are safe bets! ;)

Now I'm about to head and do some of the other things I didn't get done yesterday, and whip up a batch of hubbie's fav cookies too - I like to put them in his lunches!