You've heard the expression. "When bad things happen to good people"? I'd like to think I'm a "good people", and what happened was most certainly bad. In a freak moment I fainted. I've never fainted before. So what better way to faint then on a down-escallator!
Falling face forward it was clear, when I woke up, that I'd fallen face first, on my jaw.
The result:
1 broken jaw
3 broken front teeth
1 tooth knocked out
1 upper lip split open from the inside-out
1 mean gash across the bottom of the chin
And before long I was being taken off to emergency, where after many hours and xrays the head oral surgeon intern gave me the news:
"We're going to have to wire your jaw shut Sir."
I freaked. Who wouldn't? Well maybe you wouldn't. But that's why I'm not you. I make my living with my entire mouth. And my jaw is a very important part of the deal. But besides that, what a claustrophobic thought it was to me!
I also adore food. I'm health nut, but what I do eat I enjoy...A LOT. How would I eat?
"Through a straw and food processed in a blender" the doctor told me. For 6-8 weeks.
How would I breath? What if I get sick and need to throw up?
'You'll breath through your nose, and your lips will come apart, just not your mouth." said the doc. We advise you to carry wire cutters with you where ever you go. If you need to be sick you'll have to cut yourself free. But you'll need to return immediately to the hospital to be rewired right away"
I was over come, regressing to infancy. It all seemed too much too quickly to take in.
Before long, the morphine drip kicked in and they started freezing my mouth with a series of needles. Each one seemed to hurt more and more. Then the numbness began.
"The best thing you can do right now is not to fight us and just relax" the team of three doctors told me. They cranked my lower jaw back into place as closely as they could to my previous bite". Then began a crude process of wrapping the arch bars around my upper and lower teeth. The whole time I kept thinking: "I can't believe this is happening to me!" And then more pain. "More morphine" I begged through the wire with was flopping all over my face.
Eventually the arch bars were on. The look like a really crude wide set of braces. And then they began wiring me shut. I felt like I was in a "Saw" horror film.
"This really is happening to me" I thought.
By 4am I was home. My face was swollen like a melon. My lip stitched and chin as well. I was starving. And didn't have a thing to blend, or a straw. I fell asleep hungry, hoping I would wake up and realize I'd had an awful dream.
"Yes"! I thought. "That's what this is". Another one of my vivid dreams brought on by my natural sleep supplement I sometimes take. It'll all be fine and over with when I wake up."
I startled awake a few hours later. Immediately it was clear to me. It wasn't a dream. My jaw, is most certainly wired shut. Damn. This is gonna suck! LITERALLY.
18 days behind the "metal curtain" and my suspicions are confirmed. It does most certainly SUCK!
