[added 9/11/11]
I was going back through some posts from the early days, and realized that what Jared considered Day 3 (Thursday) was actually Day 2, so we had 2 posts from Thursday (one by me in the morning and one by him at night after my discharge), but none from Friday, so I wanted to write a little bit about that experience, because some stuff actually did happen.
The swelling was still increasing at this point, and I was in a lot of discomfort. It was exhausting for me just to get from my green chair to the bathroom. Around 2 in the afternoon, I started feeling... just kind of bad, in general. My digestive system had started working a little bit, so that was uncomfortable, and then we had an appointment with Dr. Voorhees at 3:30. My mom, who is a pre-school teacher was thankfully able to take off the afternoon (during the first week of school!), so she arrived at about 2:30, and quickly assured me that not looking in the mirror was the correct decision for me. It was really excellent that she got here before my appointment because she was very helpful.
Jared sort of downplayed it in his post because he's really nice, but on Thursday when we were leaving the hospital, I had a pretty major meltdown. I cried when they said I could be discharged, and my nurse said I was probably just physically and emotionally exhausted, because I did want to get home, and I wasn't worried about being out of the hospital, I just cried. Then poor Jared had to walk me through the whole hospital to the parking garage (it might not have been that long, but it felt like a long walk), with me kind of hunched over, and of course looking like somebody just hit me in the face with a baseball bat, and sort of whimpering the whole time. By the time we made it to the car, I didn't want to leave. The ride home seemed as if it would be interminable, and I just didn't see how I was going to do it. We really almost turned around and went back in, but Jared, who has always been excellent in times of panic, put his foot down when he realized it was just me freaking out and not any actual pain or problems. The ride home was really long, not helped by the fact that I've always been prone to car sickness, but we made it, and Jared deposited me in the green chair and went to go get my pain meds from Walgreens (I had been unwilling to wait the 5-10 minutes they said it would take when we had driven by on the way home).
So, back to Friday, a car ride wasn't high on my list of exciting activities. I even wrote in my book "Can't Dr. Voorhees come here?" and when asked why he would do that I responded "Cause I'm special", but I knew that wasn't a real possibility. So, the car ride to the doctor was another long one, with my mom in the backseat trying to keep me from swaying too much with the motion of the car, while Jared tried to walk the tightrope of not jostling me too much while getting to the doctor (and therefore out of the car) as soon as possible.
If I hadn't felt so badly, I probably would have been kind of embarrassed about my behavior at the doctor, but I wasn't feeling well, and I was loopy on pain meds still, so I'm just trying to let it go. We were taken to the "recovery" area (I guess for people who have outpatient stuff, like extractions), and when Dr. Voorhees showed up, I kind of just broke. I guess the somewhat shaky rationale behind my emotional turn was "You're the doctor, and I'm not supposed to feel this badly when there's a doctor around". It's good that my mom knows sign language, because I was able to say most of what I needed to say without worrying about writing. Dr. Voorhees did a quick inspection of my mouth, and then said he would see me on Monday. Relieved, we went back home and filled me with anti-nausea and pain medication.
On a side note, the first thing that Jared did when relieved by my mom on Friday was clean (and when Jared cleans, he really cleans, as opposed to what he calls my "straightening up") the kitchen. Needless to say, cleaning the kitchen makes a little bit of noise, and when I complained to my mom and asked her to go tell him to be quiet, she said "He's cleaning the kitchen", implying that I should be grateful to have a husband who, upon being given freedom from nursing duties, immediately turns to cleaning to make the next nurse's job easier. I guess I take my awesome husband for granted sometimes...
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