Two weeks later...

Well, it's been pretty much two weeks since the operation and I guess it's time to recap a bit. Overall the experience this far has been a lot less painful than what I'd anticipated; I was even able to get rid of the heavier painkillers less then a week after the operation, opting instead for three daily dosages of ibuprofen. The swelling and bruises subsided fairly quickly, with some minor swelling still present in the maxilla area. A general numbness still plagues the lower parts of the face, but my upper lip and the area around the nose have some feeling in them. So to summarize, the outward appearance is starting to look very good, but the issues with the nerve are still troubling me. Medicine-wise yesterday I finally got through all the other medicines with the exception of the ibuprofen, so that's also nice.

The sick leave itself has been, well, semi-interesting. It's been the first time that I've really been forced to slow down in years. Right from the outset I began to clear the backlog of books from my night stand and thus far I've gone through Jeremy Clarkson's Don't Stop Me Now, Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, as well as Nicholas Antongiavanni's The Suit. Fortunately with three more weeks to go, I still have a ton to read.

The operation itself was on a Tuesday, and during the following weekend I set out for short walks around the countryside. The surgeons suggested that I should try to get out walking as soon as possible as it would help with the swelling. And it certainly did help, as far as I could tell. Yesterday I exchanged walking for some jogging and went for a 5km jog both in the morning and the afternoon. It's quite apparent that what little stamina and health I had before the operation are now gone and while the 5km jogs didn't really kill me, they were notably more difficult than the 10km jogs before. But I guess I'll try to run at least 5km each day to slowly get my strength back, but as of now I officially decided that I will not under any circumstance take part in the Helsinki City Marathon. I was, however, thinking that if I find some interesting half marathon somewhere during the autumn, I might try that again. As for golf, I haven't really gotten to the course yet, but was planning of trying that too later in the week.

Eating started off as fairly tricky and my diet from the outset consisted of a liquid diet. Since then things like mashed potatoes and minced meat have been proven to be a fairly nice meal. The doctors suggested that I should prepare for an up to 7 kg drop in weight. So far I started off with a pre-surgery weight of 84kg and at worst my weight dropped to 79.5kg, but quickly regained to about 81-82kg, so this seems to have also worked out fairly well. I'm still waiting for the six week mark when I can officially started chewing soft things. One of the things that makes eating very difficult right now is a thing called the splint. It's a plastic rail which attached to the teeth of the upper jaw and helps guide the lower jaw into place by utilizing rubber bands. This, I've been told, would be removed at the four week mark, so still two more weeks to go.

One of the more interesting parts of a sick leave is that officially you are not allowed to do any work, namely because of insurance related issues. If you injure yourself during the sick leave and it turns out that you were working, no insurance would cover that. That said, I may have attended a couple of conference calls already and prepared some slide sets, kept my inbox clean, etc. But that's only for my own sanity, as doing small tasks for work really helps during a time period when in essence you're forced to be with yourself for weeks and weeks, instead of being able to run around town and so on.