Day 90

So I know today is technically the 3 month mark but I will do my temporary send off after my post op this week.

Not much has changed the past few weeks. I am gradually able to eat more and more normal food. Today I even had bread and cheese, a little tough and chewy but good practice. I'm hoping that in the next month or so I'll be ale to eat those Girl Scout cookies calling my name from the fridge.

Well Happy Easter everyone! I'm spending my Easter Sunday having a Walking Dead marathon and laying on the couch!

Day 84

Yowza it has been a crazy trip! I am finally at the airport in Frankfurt in between flights. I am currently sitting in the Lufthansa lounge working on my 2nd cappuccino and wondering if my fellow travelers will think it weird if I do my jaw exercises. I have been slacking these past 10 days. It's hard to find 3 hours in your day to sit there and contort your mouth. I find that doing this in public causes people to think you have turrets and/or scare small children. I better buckle down this next week so I can reach my goal of opening my mouth 41mm by my 3 month post op.

My broken face really wasn't as much of an issue on this trip. I could always eat almost anything, no additional swelling or pain. I did notice my jaw clicking and popping a lot but I think that is because I have been skipping my jaw exercises so it is tight.

Nothing much to report on the jaw recovery front but I did have an amazing weekend in Abuja with one of my best friends, Heather. After my week in Lagos, I flew through Abuja on my way home to see her since she is a teacher at an international school there. It was a nice change of pace from Lagos where i had 5 armed guards accompany me to the airport and was not allowed out of the office or the hotel without security. However in Abuja (which apparently is more dangerous) Heather and I hopped around the city on our own sans scary Nigerian men with big guns.

Our first night we had pizza and beer at an outdoor beer garden overlooking the national mosque. The following day we spent at the pool at the Hilton, sipping diet cokes and people watching. That night I helped her chaperone the middle and high school dance haha. You know what's awkward? Watching 11-18 yr olds trying to grind on each other to Nigerian rap music. She rewarded me for my chaperoning duties by taking me to a "bush bar". This literally is just an open air bar in the bushes with cheap beer. I'm pretty sure my company would NOT be happy about that so we are going to keep this a secret ok? Julian/Steve - don't tell the big boss or he may never let me travel again.

My last day we had a true Sunday Funday and drank ciders by the pool all day. I even have a nice little sunburn to take home with me :-) this is definitely the first time I've come home from a business trip with a tan!

Ok, just one more 10 hr flight to go and I get to shower, snuggle with my dog and spend Twin's last night catching up and hanging out.

2 photos for you today: one profile pic and one that I took with my iPad upside down on accident

Day 80

Soooo exhausted. I have not stopped moving since I left American soil. After Finally arriving in Lagos we had the luxury of spending another 2 hours going through customs and waiting for our luggage. T.I.A., this is Africa... It was 1:00 am by the time we got to the hotel and we all smelled like a Nigerian airport.

It is so humid here that you have to shower by the time you get home from work because you are all sticky and sweaty. I'm currently sitting in the lounge drinking my long awaited diet coke. Excuse me, coke light ( which is better in my opinion). I don't have any fun pictures to share today unless you want to see pictures of traffic and walls with warning signs that say "do not urinate here". I didn't understand why I kept seeking that written everywhere. Then I saw a random guy just turn around and start peeing on a wall right next to a street full of people and cars. I thought to myself, oh, well that explains the smell.

Food is a little bit of an issue here because choices are limited unless you are at the hotel. We visited a vocational training center and after walking around and seeing the entire campus, they insisted we stay and join them for lunch. Since my digestive system is skeptical of Nigerian food, my only option was chicken and French fries. Well, there is no such thing as a chicken breast filet here. They literally just chop off pieces of chicken with bone, fat, organs and all. So I basically had a plate of fries for lunch. There was no way i could bite into this chicken without breaking a bracket off or stressing my jaw bones.

Don't get me wrong, Nigeria is not bad. The hotel is 4 star and the people are so hospitable they make Southerners look like a**holes. And in all fairness, I haven't seen any dead bodies in the road since my first trip...so there's that...

Greetings from Lagos, wet hair and all:

Day 77

I'm currently on a 10 day work trip overseas and I am exhausted! I popped over to London for 2 days then was supposed to be on an overnight flight to Lagos, Nigeria. Well, 1 1/2 hours into the flight they announce technical difficulties and take us all the way back to London! We have to stay in hotels and they rescheduled the flight for the following afternoon. By the time we went back through customs and checked in at the hotel, it was 5am... To make it even more enjoyable, the airport hotel kind of reminds me of The Shining. I keep expecting to see creepy twin girls standing at the end of my hallway.

On a positive note, the lounge for Virgin Atlantic is phenomenal. There is even a crystal chandelier! It's all decorated like a rock star lounge and they serve you all the food and drinks you want. I could get used to this :-)

I was a little nervous before my first flight because it was the first time I had flown since surgery. I wasn't allowed to fly the first month because the pressure is not good for healing sinuses (refer to Day 71 for a full understanding of how broken my face is). Well, no issues thus far! And eating in London was easy because you know what is a nice soft food? Fish & chips. You know what else is perfect? Guinness :-) Nigeria will be another story, we'll see how that goes haha.

Well, I'm off to Lagos for 4 days then Abuja for 3.

Day 74

It's been a good week. I managed to get in 4 hot yoga classes, 1 vinyasa class, and 3 Crossfit workouts, a couple wine nights with Lauren, and a delicious dinner at Jasper's steakhouse last night. My week was only marred by a minor poo incident...

To make a long story short: I live in an old houses so naturally the pipes are old too. Well as I sit on the couch watching my new favorite show, The Walking Dead, I hear a bubbling sound down the hall. At first I think Lauren is listening to bongo music in her room so I think nothing of it. Well when I go check out the bathrooms I realize that toilet bowl water is all over the floor and sewage is backed up into all the tubs! Oh great, my friend finally comes to live with me and my bathrooms are full of poo! After panicked calls to my landlord, the plumber is set to come out the next morning. However, I cannot even sleep in my room because it is connected to the bathroom and well....that's not the greatest smell :-( on the bright side, I made it to the 6am yoga class! Partially motivated by my need to burn off the cupcakes Tina ate for dinner but mostly so I could shower at the studio... So the lesson is: even when your house is overrun with shit, there is always a silver lining.

I really enjoyed getting to spend some valuable time with my best friend/twin. She has been staying with me for the month and it has been amazing. She's so easy to live with that I never want her to leave! We are very alike in a lot of ways: our love of the Olsen Twins, good food, yoga, and staying in drinking wine and watching tv instead of going out partying. But we're also opposite in a lot of ways. She is vegan/ vegetarian most of the time while I am a natural carnivore. She is mellow and laid back whereas I am high strung and moving at a million miles an hour. This is why it's been so great having her here- she balances me out. Hopefully I can retain some of her good influence when she leaves (almond milk, keeping up my yoga practice, putting good karma out there).

Here's a nice toothy smile just for you Twin :-)

Day 71

Getting closer and closer to the 90 Day Mark... surgery feels like such a distant memory now. I can't believe that a little over 2 months ago I had a broken face and struggled with something as simple as drinking water. Now I'm chowing down on salmon, cupcakes (I curse you Tina), rice, eggs etc. I'm really not limited with my diet anymore. Except for steak. And sandwiches. I feel like Joey on Friends: I love sandwiches and can't wait until I can actually bite into things.

On a super super exciting note..I got to eat pizza last week! I was literally doing a happy dance and smiling like an idiot with a mouthful of pizza. My friends made dinner and bought a separate special pizza just for me that they didn't cook all the way so it would be super soft. It will still be a while before I can enjoy a crispy brick oven pizza at Grimaldi's (sad face) but I'm getting closer!

So, have you ever wondered exactly what they did to my face during surgery? Well feast your eyes on this:

When I say they broke my face, I wasn't kidding. I didn't realize I had titanium plates and screws going all the way up by my nose. I mistakenly showed my mom this picture thinking it was really cool. Her immediate response: "OMG, you have holes in your bones! You are NEVER wakeboarding again!!!" Lesson learned: don't show your mother your sub-dermal battle scars, she won't think its cool.

Today's mugshot:

Day 68

Yay it's the end of the week! It has been crazy this week at the office. After a few 12 hour days and LOTS of report writing, I'm glad it's over. I went to both the orthodontist and the dentist this week! The ortho has decided to wait to do any major adjustments for another month or so until my surgeon lets me take the retainer out. So, they just changed my elastics and took some X-rays to check the angle of my teeth.

My teeth are finally not yellow anymore! The staining came off after a cleaning and I was so happy. I've spent the past few weeks looking like I don't own a toothbrush. I will say it again: I have never had such an appreciation for oral hygiene as I do now.

My cousin and grandma came in town for the weekend which was awesome. My grandma stayed with my Dad and my cousin stayed with me. Fortunately, we didn't have to entertain each other. Instead, we just went to the gym, yoga, drank wine, watched movies, talked at the speed of light, and ate all of the food Texas is famous for: Kolaches, Tex-Mex, Crawfish...

I'm now enjoying a lazy Sunday and for the first time in 18 months, I don't have to worry about school work for the week because its 'Spring Break'. I remember being so excited about spring break when I was younger: a week of vacation with friends or just sleeping in and doing nothing. When you are a grown-up and have a full time job, you still have to work :-( How is that fair? It's kind of sad that now I just look forward to having a week where I get to actually come home in the evenings! A week break from working all day, then driving an hour to campus, sitting in class for 3 hours and then driving all the way back only to get home at 10pm. And on the nights I didn't have class, running around like crazy trying to get errands done, doing homework, or driving to campus anyways to meet with classmates to work on group projects. Needless to say, I have a standing date with my couch and TV all week.

Day 63

It's official, I don't feel like my face is broken anymore! I mean, my jaw joint still feels tight and it's hard to stretch my mouth open but I no longer am uncomfortable. It took 2 months but I finally feel close to normal. When my coworkers ask me how my recovery is going I actually forget for a second what they are talking about. Tonight at class I gave a presentation and noticed my speaking was much better as well. I did have one minor verbal mishap this morning when I told my coworker I was going to a noon yoga class and she responded with a very confused look on her face... Apparently my retainer made my N sound like a D and she thought I was going to a NUDE class. Good thing we cleared that up!

On the food front: I can basically eat everything except crunchy foods now. I'm trying to eat healthier since Tina went a little crazy this past month. Now that my energy is back and my strength is increasing, I've doubled up my workouts :-) this month I will be combining 5 days a week of hot yoga with 3-4 days of Crossfit and a few runs mixed in there. It is now March and officially time to get ready for bikini season. I cant wait to be back out on the boat again with my friends. However, Holy cow I'm sore! It feels great to have endorphins pumping again and have that good relaxed but exhausted feeling.

Day 61

It's been a fun few days. After a stressful week of work and school, friday happy hour couldn't come soon enough. Twin got to meet most of my work friends and we all blew off some steam with our favorite after work margaritas. I was feeling daring and took a bit out of a chip and I did it! I don't really enjoy chips and salsa when the roof of my mouth is covered by the retainer but it still felt like an accomplishment. My friends even clapped haha. We then went out for Lebanese food and I could actually order food and eat with no substitutions! Kufta is a perfect example of soft meat so that paired with rice was a perfect meal.

Saturday was a lazy day of sitting on the couch watching tv. Once twin got home though we decided to go see Life of Pi since it won so many awards. They were right! It was an awesome movie. To keep up the trend of Oscar movies, we then rented Argo which was also awesome. A slow clap for Ben Afleck....

On the healing front: I'm feeling great. In comparison to days 3/4/5 which were the worst, I'm now like 5% of that. The only feelings of swelling or discomfort is a tiny bit in my nose. It just feels tight around my sinuses but not nearly as bad. I don't really have any pain except when I do my jaw exercises. I feel like I'm already healed even though I know I still have to take it easy. At the 3 month mark I'm going to ask the doc about wakeboarding. Maybe if I promise to not try any tricks or jumps that could possibly end in a face plant, he will give me the green light.

Ok off to join twin at the studio for some hot yoga!