Trials and Challenges during the surgery

Surgery is probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, now understandably I haven't had to do a lot of hard things in my life seeing as I am only 19 and have been very privileged. But I think that this would have been hard for anyone. The thing about it is that it was not painful in the least bit. I remember the first day of surgery I was weak but not in pain at all. In fact I was making jokes and happy the day of the surgery, even though nobody understood me. Day two is when I really discovered what was hard about surgery. This is when I first started missing food, hating medicine, and hating not being able to talk. For the first week this is all I cared about. Eating through a syringe is probably the worst food related experience a person can have and that being the only way of getting food in you for weeks at a time is even worst. That same syringe is what I used to take my anti-bacterial medicine every 10 hours. This was the worst tasting thing I have ever had in my life, it was literally painful going down my throat. It felt like I was taking poison, which oddly enough on my last day of taking it I discovered that I was in fact allergic to this medicine and is was poison to me. Not being able to talk was also very discouraging since I would often want to make a joke out of my surgery to lighten the mood around my house and think of the surgery in a more positive light, but when no one could understand me it made it so I couldn't get myself to believe it either. Thankfully as time went by all of these issues became easier. About the fourth day after surgery I had a chick flick marathon with my sister and Mom and I feel like that brought my spirits up and around that same time I was able to be understood and that also made life a lot better. Soon I was able to force myself to go to the mall or to see a movie with the family. These all brought my spirits up again and I felt great again despite not being able to eat!

Unfortunately this was not the end of my challenges. Once I was able to eat without a siringe is when my next challenge came to surface. This was a wonderful wondeful day for my stomach! The second I was given permission to eat I went and got a McDonald's Hamburger and it was heaven! For the next week I rediscovered my love of food and everything tasted amazing, even things that used to taste horrible tasted awesome because I could eat them! But this is also the point where I started to look normal again. I know what you are thinking, "Olivia isn't that a good thing?". Well it is but not when looking normal is different then what you are used to. I looked in the mirror and I saw a girl who wasn't me. She has this huge chin, a big nose, and she couldn't smile the same way she used to. And that is when I started to feel pain from this surgery. My favorite thing about myself physically was my big smile that never seemed to leave my face. Someone once called it a permi-smile. I loved this about myself. But I looked at myself in the mirror and for an hour I tried to smile and I couldn't see any teeth and it was ugly and I ws very unhappy. I thought that this is how I was going to look for the rest of my life. I know that some people told me that I was still swollen and that it wasn't permanent but I looked in the mirror and I saw who I was becomeing and I was not happy. This is what I struggled with the most and for the longest period of time. Thankfully I realized about a month later that i would be able to smile again and It would still be big and beautiful but for that time this was scaring.

The final major challenge during surgery was seeing people who knew me before and having to face them. Now don't get me wrong, most people were very nice and pretended that the change in my looks didn't matter. But I hated it! I hated the looks in peoples eyes of shock and sadness or sympathy in some. I hated it when people didn't recognize me at all, I hated this feeling in my stomach whenever I saw someone else who I hadn't seen since the surgery. It was simply dreadful. This trial simply went away from time and from accepting how I looked myself. So yeah those were the main trials during the surgery. Yay?