Wipe that smirk off your face!

First of all thanks for being patient with me while I recover

from my tubing accident.

It has been three weeks since that day

and I still have trouble closing my eyes at night

to go to sleep.

I replay the few seconds before I hit that wall over and over.

I'm searching for ways to change what happened,

to tweak things just a little differently.

But it always ends up the same.

I always hit it

and I am lost in a sea of swirling white bubbles.
Sometimes I wake up gasping for air,

other times I just float off and other dreams come.

Things are what they are though.

No amount of mental replay can change that day.

I do believe that things happen for a reason and I'm

trying to think on the good in this accident.

I am definitely blessed beyond measure to
have such an awesome family who loves me and

who take such great care of me.

I also am blessed to have such wonderful friends

who prayed for me, sent me gifts, made phone calls

and sent e-mails expressing their love and concern.

I'm obviously blessed to still be alive

which sometimes overwhelms me with emotion.

I've never had such a close brush with death before.

It is hard to wrap my mind around sometimes.

I'm not a morbid girl.

I don't think seriously about my own demise.

It is very sobering to think of how fragile life is.

The weight of it has changed my daily thinking immensely.

I am more conscious of what things are important

and what things are just things

and nothing more.

I do have physical reminders though

that will stick around for quite a while,

should I start to lose my newfound way of thinking.

Here is the damage report:

One of my chipped teeth is fixed,

but it sits differently in my mouth than it used to.

The other is due to be fixed this week.

My teeth in general are off center a tad to the left.
My palette is a tad narrower which changes my whole smile.

It's different in a smirky, crooked kinda way.

Back to that in a minute.

My cheek bone was badly bruised and has

a tiny fracture on the left side.

The muscles under my left nostril and cheek are acting differently

than before.

I have some movement as normal, but not all of it.

This may or may not come back.

My top lip feels like I have a small grape

under it when I pucker my lips.

I'm not sure if this will go away or not.

This is a little funny to me because

my cousin Leah used to put a grape under her top lip

sometimes when we'd eat together just to make us all laugh.

I would do it too sometimes.

Now I can do it whenever I want

and I don't even need a grape!

There is still a ball of swelling right on the apple of my cheek.

I hope that this is really just swelling and not
a ball of muscle that has been scrunched up and will stay there.

I still have the remnants of a bruise below my left eye.

I will have two tiny scars between my nose and my top lip.

The doctor thought I may have broken my back at L4, but the x-ray revealed only some
torn ligaments and what they called
"indefinite arthritis".
I will be in physical therapy for a while for that.

Now back to my smile.
This is the hardest thing for me to accept.
I always thought I had such a great smile.
No matter what weight I was,
how broken out my face was
or how bad my hair style was,
I always had a great smile.
And I flashed it often,
not in a conceited "look at me" way,
but I genuinely enjoyed keeping a ready smile
playing on my face to make others feel great.
Who doesn't like to smile and be smiled at?
Now when I look in the mirror,
I don't recognize it.
Maybe you don't see a difference in these photos,
but it screams FOREIGN to me!
Those who know my face on a daily basis
like David and the kids, see the difference.
My left top lip droops a bit and because my teeth
are off center, it just changes everything.
My fear is that over time,
it's just going to droop more and more.
I feel silly even expressing my disappointment
over something so trivial.
I'm certainly not disfigured,
it's not horrific or life changing,
it's just different and it will take some getting used to.
Any change no matter how big or small
that you didn't get to choose takes time
to adjust to.



The plastic surgeon said that I am 95% normal
and 5% abnormal.
He asked me if I really wanted to go through the
process of trying to restore that 5%,
that he would be able to do it,
but seriously.....do I really want surgery
over something as silly as a crooked smile?
Sometimes I do.
I really, really do.
But it's just not practical.
And then there's the fact that I dislike IV's more than
I dislike my new crooked, smirky smile!!