Vega

11 Apr

On Wednesday, a few hours after my surgery, my concerned mother talked with my landlady over the phone about my medical situation. My landlady is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and she had agreed to serve as an emergency contact for my mother. After the phone conversation ended, my mother reported to me that she had talked my landlady out of buying cans of Ensure for me. Ensure is a dairy product, so I was grateful for this. This morning, though, thinking about the story reminded me that I had seen a vegan meal replacement at Whole Foods once. After a few Google searches, I determined that the product I was thinking of was Vega.

I could see on the website that the  nutrient content of Vega was very impressive. It also happens to be free of all major allergens, including soy. Since I want to have some sources of protein other than soy, this made it particularly worth trying. I purchased a few snack-size packets at Whole Foods today, and  I tasted two of the flavors. The taste certainly wasn’t anything special, but it didn’t taste bad, so I’ve decided to order a larger supply. At first, I hesitated because of the price (retail is about $5 per serving), but I decided that for something that replaces a whole meal, it really isn’t too bad, particularly given the circumstances. The best price I could find was at Food Fight Grocery, a vegan grocery store in Portland. I’ll order two large containers (which results in a substantially cheaper price per serving), and keep one in my office and one at home.

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A drug-free me

11 Apr

Yesterday, I struggled mightily to stay awake in my classes. At first I thought this was just because I stayed up late Thursday night, but then I began to wonder if Vicodin, which I had been taking twice daily, might have been playing some role. When I was in the office, I thought that the only side effect on the label was dizziness, but it occurred to me that it might actually have been drowsiness, and I had misremembered or misread.

When I got home, I checked the label of my container of Vicodin, and sure enough, it warned that the drug may cause drowsiness. I wasn’t experiencing much pain, so I decided I’d try to stop taking it.

I haven’t taken Vicodin since yesterday morning, and so far everything is going well. I don’t feel tired, but that may well be because I slept better last night. The most noticeable difference when I woke up this morning, though, was that I was able to talk reasonably well. My speech is still far from normal, I think that most people would find me comprehensible. I do struggle with certain sounds. For example, I can’t pronounce the “th” sound, so I have to use the “d” sound as young children sometimes do.

For the first time, I feel genuinely hopeful that I’ll be able to teach my classes next week.

In all fairness, I don’t know if my ability to talk has anything to do with my newly drug-free status. It may well be that it’s just a consequence of my mouth being a little bit less swollen. However, I do think it’s very much plausible that a narcotic like Vicodin would make it harder to exercise the relatively precise control required to speak clearly.

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The wired diet

10 Apr

Now that I’ve been wired for a couple of days, my nourishment habits are starting to fall into a pattern. I drink a lot of smoothies, perhaps four to six (each about 3 cups) per day. The ingredients of the smoothies aren’t exactly the same each time, but usually I use soy milk, soy protein powder, and some soy yogurt. I have some frozen fruit and some bananas, but they tend not to blend well enough to pass through both the straw and the small gaps between my teeth. I’d like to get some rice milk to use instead of soy milk so that I’m not taking in so much soy.

I’ll usually also eat one can of soup per day. This requires the soup to be pureed in the blender. I wish that I could eat a bit more soup in a day, but I’m hesitant to try because of the sodium content.

Much of my perishable solid food has gone into the freezer. This includes some pasta, a loaf of bread, and some Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon that I made on Saturday. The red bell peppers and salad greens in my refrigerator will unfortunately probably rot before I can eat them.

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Stitch removal

10 Apr

After my morning classes, I went to University Health Services to get the stitches removed from my lip and my chin. After waiting in the lobby for a short while, I was seen by the triage nurse, who I’ve learned is responsible for prioritizing patients based on the severity of their conditions. The triage nurse today was actually the same nurse who had bandaged my wounds on Monday, so she was somewhat familiar with my story. On Monday, though, I had been able to talk reasonably well, but today it’s very hard for me to convey information to other people, so I was relieved at not having to repeat my whole story.

I was kind of annoyed when the triage nurse asked how I was going to get enough food with my mouth wired shut and then added “You’re already such a little guy.”  I’m about 6′ 1″ tall, and I weighed 155 pounds when I stepped on a scale during spring break. I certainly don’t consider myself to be big, but this was the first time in a long time that anybody described me to my face as “little.” I could afford to lose ten pounds before I’d be classified as underweight. The remark seemed particularly inappropriate coming from somebody who was supposed to be giving me a medical evaluation. I mean, if I had stepped on a scale, then it might be appropriate to bring up my weight, but I think it’s reasonable for me to expect the nurse not to make uninformed comments on health-related issues. I know she meant well, but it still seems inappropriate to me.

After the triage nurse, I was seen by a doctor and a nurse. I was amused that the doctor who looked at me asked if my bicycle was damaged. I did my best to tell him that it wasn’t even scratched, although I haven’t cared enough to look at it. The nurse took out the stitches. She had a fair amount of trouble with this because the thread on my chin was the same color as my facial hair, which I’ve been unable to shave since the accident.

I went into UHS hoping to ask somebody whether I should be concerned about the pain I’ve been experiencing in my left ear. I think it’s probably just swelling around the site of the fracture, but I wanted to check. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to communicate this question to anybody. Looking back on the visit, it seems like somebody should have recognized the obvious difficulty I was having in communicating and offered me a pen and paper to write down my answers. On the other hand, perhaps I should have brought my own pen and paper.

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Not a good use of time

10 Apr

I just spent a fair amount of time looking at food blogs. This is the last thing somebody who won’t be able to eat any solid food for another three weeks (and probably won’t many of the foods on these blogs for even longer) needs to be doing, particularly when there are so many problem sets to be finished

Teaching (sort of)

9 Apr

Thursday is the day that I’m supposed to teach three sections of calculus. I anticipated not being able to teach this week and arranged for people to fill in for me. However, because I had an exam to pass back today, and the people filling in for me weren’t there for the grading, I went along to return the exams and try to answer questions people had about the way they were graded. I wasn’t really able to answer questions out loud, but I was able to write things down when issues came up.

On an unrelated note, one of the friends who filled in for me raised the question of whether I could do math while on Vicodin. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the medication might cause a problem, but it is a narcotic, so it’s possible. I really haven’t gotten any math done since the accident, and it’s possible that the medication has some role in this. I’m only taking the Vicodin twice a day, but it’s something to consider.

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Oatmeal fail

9 Apr

I tried making oatmeal. I ground the oats in the blender before preparing the oatmeal, but when I put them in hot water the oat fragments expanded enough so that most couldn’t pass through a straw. Even many of those that couldn’t pass through a straw ended up getting stuck in the wires. In a last ditch effort to use the oatmeal, I tried taking just a little bit and adding it to a smoothie, but this made it impossible for me to drink the smoothie. I left the smoothie in the refrigerator until I can acquire a strainer with which to remove the oatmeal.

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The newly wired life

8 Apr

My mouth has started to feel sore, but I’m not too worried because my mouth used to feel this way all the time when I had orthodontic braces and went in to have them adjusted. My tongue is adjusting to having wires on the bottom of my mouth. I don’t really understand how this is possible, but I haven’t been able to find any wires on the top of my mouth.

The oral surgeon called this evening to check in with me, which was nice. He was able to understand me, which I found impressive (he said he had plenty of practice). He repeated some things which he had apparently told me earlier when I wasn’t alert enough to remember them. He told me that the procedure went well and that he was able to get the bone exactly where he wanted it. He also talked to me about the Zip-N-Squeeze bags he gave me for taking in purees and liquids. I actually haven’t tried to use them yet; I’ve just been drinking through a straw.

One consequence of having my jaw wired is that I now have to crush my Vicodin tablets before I take them. This certainly isn’t a difficult task, but I’ve found that whatever I take it with tastes very bad.

There is some good news, which is that I can now tilt my head back without any pain.

Nightmare scenario

8 Apr

Lately, I’ve become worried about the possibility that my blender might break. Mine is definitely a low end model, and even when I bought it, I saw several reviews complaining that it hadn’t lasted long. I’ve only had it for a couple of months, but it’s going through a period of heavy use. If it does break, I’ll probably be able to replace it eventually, but until then I’ll be on a diet of soy milk and soy protein powder. I’m certainly not afraid of soy, but I prefer to avoid the whole monoculture thing.

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Surgery

8 Apr

I actually managed to sleep pretty well last night, which these days means five hours without interruption. It may be because I was exhausted from not sleeping well since the accident, or it may be that I started taking Vicodin to ease the pain.

When I awoke, the swelling in my face seemed to have subsided a little bit, but I was skeptical that the improvement was enough so that the surgeon would be able to work on me. Shortly after I had finished changing the dressings on my wounds (a rather laborious process due to the large number of abrasions), my ride arrived, and it was time for me to leave for the surgeon’s office.

When I got into the surgeon’s office, a man whose position I don’t know (but he certainly wasn’t the surgeon) had me confirm that I was on an empty stomach. He then seated me in a chair, put a mask over my face, and put me on laughing gas. I had never been on laughing gas before, and I didn’t find this pleasant in the slightest. This was partly because it gave me a sharp pain in the top of the head. Furthermore, the man tried to make small talk with me while I was on laughing gas, and I found it more painful to talk while on laughing gas than usual. I suspected that this was because I had adapted my jaw motions to minimize pain since the accident, but that the laughing gas didn’t allow me this level of control. I’m not much of a small talker to begin with, so I was thoroughly annoyed with this man, and I considered responding to him with a string of expletives. I thought that I could get away with it because I was under the influence of the laughing gas, but my better judgment prevailed. The man eventually realized that I had stopped answering his questions and saw the pained look on my face, and he shut off the laughing gas. As he did so, the surgeon walked in, and told him to put an IV in my arm.

The next thing I remember, I had woken up with my mouth wired shut and the surgeon was telling me that he hadn’t quite been able to get my bone to stay in place without wiring my jaw. He told me he wanted me to come back so he could look at my mouth in a week, and one of the receptionists asked me if 1:15 next Wednesday would work. I knew that I had class at that time, but I didn’t think I’d be able to communicate this fact, so I just agreed to come back then.

My friend drove me home, and I was actually alert and comprehensible enough to direct him to my house by a different route than the one that we had come by. He saw me into my apartment and left me with a container of oatmeal that he didn’t want and that I hoped to be able to drink through a straw if I prepared it right. My friend left, and I went to bed.

Just short of two hours later, I was awoken by my cell phone. It was somebody calling from the oral surgeon’s office, needing to know my father’s date of birth for insurance purposes. I did my best to answer the question, but she became frustrated when she couldn’t understand me at first. I did eventually get the answer across, but it strikes me as terrible judgment to have called in the first place given the circumstances. She should have known that I was recovering from anesthesia, that there was a good chance that I’d be resting, and that my jaw was wired shut. If she really wanted to know the answer, she could have contacted my parents (whose information I had provided for insurance reasons) instead; they would have been happy to answer and easier to understand.

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