Well-Meaning Diminishment

Pardon me, I need to get something off my chest. I apologize if I come across as scolding, but this is something which has been bothering me for months:

I know that people mean well when they look at my face and tell me that it's not a big deal, that it's only a little scar. I know that they are trying to tell me "It's hardly noticeable, don't freak out about it."

But what I hear is "You're really overreacting about this. Stop being such a damn baby. It's only a little scar."

And that drives me absofuckinglutely bugnuts because it diminishes what I went through, because while everyone else sees a scar that is healing nicely, what I see is a reminder that I was betrayed and assaulted by a pet that I loved and I thought I could trust, and that assault disfigured me. And I have to look at it EVERY. GODDAMN. DAY.

Imagine the worst thing that's happened to you. Now imagine being reminded of it every time you look in the mirror. Now, imagine someone telling you that your daily reminder of your worst moment is just a little thing, it's nothing to worry about, hardly noticeable. How would that make you feel?

Even though I know they mean well, it makes me feel like they are diminishing what I went through. "Oh, it's just a little mauling. You'll be fine."

So please, I beg you: please don't tell me my scar is so little, so minor, so hardly noticeable. Instead, please say something like "It's healing nicely." Which is true, because it is and I am. 

Nice and slow. 

Another Status Report on my Face

I realized I haven't told you folks about the new plastic surgeon I've been seeing, so here's the backstory followed by what happened when I went to see him on Wednesday.

After I had that terrible appointment with my lazy, useless, callous, no-good plastic surgeon, I fired him and went in search of another one. Fortunately for me, one of my neighbors is an LPN who works for a local Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon (the exact same kind of doctor who sewed my lips up after the attack) and who had noticed we had one less dog on our nightly walks, which led to a conversation about the injury. She, too, thought my old plastic surgeon was full of crap, and was confident that her boss could fix me up. She even set me up with a free consultation with him!

During the appointment, the OMS was a whirlwind of activity like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil: he came in, examined me, said "Oh yeah, we can fix this easily by doing X, Y, and Z," and then he was out of the room. My friend the LPN set some things up, the doctor whirled into the room again, and gave me several injections of something called Kenalog right in the scar tissue (I'm pleased to report that I could actually feel the needle going in, which is an odd thing to be happy about but that means I have less nerve damage to that area than I feared) before he whirled out again. Then the LPN gave me some scar reducing gel, telling me to use it 2x a day and to continue rubbing itamin E into my scar once a day, and that I'd need to come back in six weeks.

Let me tell you, those three things really reduced the swelling. If you look at these selfies I took during my trip to Fredericksburg, you can see the scar if you look really hard (it's hidden under dermablend -- which, by the way, is expensive but worth the cost) but it's not obvious and it's definitely not puffy.

That brings us to a few days ago, when I had my 6-week checkup. Both the LPN and OMS were really pleased with how the scar had visibly reduced in thickness, and so they gave me another round of Kenalog injections (which actually hurt worse than last time, which again I'll interpret as a good thing). Then they used a laser on the scar, focusing on the red parts where the stitching was, to blend the color in with the rest of my face.

I'm not going to say it was pleasant, but it wasn't bad. It hurt worse when I got my tattoo. Heck, the Kenalog injections hurt worse! But let me tell you, I looked AWFUL afterwards because the lasered areas were irritated like heck and oozing blood, so no pictures of that here.

I have another appointment in 2 more weeks, probably to see how my skin has recovered from the laser. I'll let you know how that goes.

The Past Two Days Have Been Terrible

I'm not just talking about the tragedy in Florida over Valentine's Day or the sadly-not-surprising revelation that the FBI had not one but two hot tops about the shooter, one five months ago and one a month ago. Those things are awful, yes, but the past two days have been terrible for me, personally.

Wednesday was bad because it was Valentine's Day, or as I like to call it, Singles Awareness Day. I have a long track record of not liking the Hallmark Holiday and being reminded that I've just spent another year romantically fallow.

But Thursday was even worse. I had an appointment with the plastic surgeon in order to see what could be done about the scarring. I was worried because he had said that the swelling would have disappeared in January, yet the wound had stopped shrinking by Christmas but still looked pretty big. Still, I went in with hope. Perhaps he could stick a needle into the puffy bits and drain them?

Instead, he was very dismissive about my feelings and my appearance, and basically told me that there's nothing he can do. It's still swollen because it's all  scar tissue, you see, and surgery would just cut into it more and create another scar, and it's so thick that a laser wouldn't do anything for it and there are no drugs which can shrink it.

The only thing that he says can be done is for me to massage it as hard as I can several times a day and just hope that it breaks down the scar tissue.

In fact, here's a quote that summarize the entire appointment:

Me: So what you're saying is that I'm stuck looking like this...

Him: Uh-huh.

Me: ... and that I'm screwed.

Him: No, not screwed! You still have full function!

In other words: Everything works, so who cares how it looks? Again, the feeling which I had from him -- and my mom agrees, because she was with me -- was that he really didn't much care, like I wasn't worth his time. Perhaps I was cutting into his lucrative face lift and boob job schedule?


And so this entire experience of being told that my face looking like a chew toy was just the way it was going to be, too bad so sad get out of my office, left me feeling like ugly, worthless crap. I pulled out my bottle of Emergency Rum and started drinking until the evil thoughts went away, and then I went to bed at like 4 am.

I got up around noon to drink some water and use the bathroom. Then I went back to bed (not because I was hung over, but because I just didn't want to deal with anyone or anything) and didn't get up until 5 pm, because I needed to get dressed and walk the remaining dog.

I still feel like ugly, rejected, spoiled meat. I don't know if I'm ever going to feel better again.


The only thing I can do at this point is to go find another plastic surgeon and fill out more paperwork and pay another first-time patient fee, just so I can get a second opinion and maybe find a doctor who gives a shit about my face, because I cannot believe there is nothing which can be done.

I think I'm going to finish off the rest of the rum and then sleep some more. At least I don't feel hideous in my dreams.

Status Report on my Face

It's just about 2.5 months since the attack. I'd say I have about 90 to 95% functionality back, because while I can talk normally I still can't open that side of my mouth completely -- partly because the injured area still feels tight when I do that and I sure as heck don't want to stretch it, and partly because I'm waiting for the plastic surgeon to give me the go ahead -- so eating some foods is awkward and dental exams are still out of the question.

I also have some awkwardness with facial expressions, mostly because the swelling is right in the pocket that the corner of my mouth forms on my cheek when I smile, grimace, etc. The best way to describe how that feels is to compare it to trying to bend a joint when the skin is swollen and puffy: there's a bit of give, and then then surrounding tissue and fluid go "Nope, uh-uh, that's as far as you go with that."

Plus, it's just a weird feeling having this swollen growth-like thing on my face. Thankfully, the swelling is going down slowly but steadily. I estimate that by mid-January it ought to be gone and we can start talking about surgery. 

Have I mentioned lately how much I appreciate everyone who helped me through these past months by giving me love and support and encouragement and donations?

If I haven't: thank you very much. 

If I have:  thank you again. 

Here's to a much better 2018!

The Day I Knew Things Were Going to Suck For a Long Time

(continued from The Night My Face Was Ruined)

I've been dragging my feet on this last part, and I'm not sure why. Clearly there's something which happened that I don't want to think about, but I'm not sure what that could be; all of the painful memories have already been discussed.

I don't know. The brain is weird. Anyway, here is the conclusion to my three part tale.

I've often said that hospital emergency rooms are where time goes to die, and I mean that. There is something oppressively eternal about those windowless rooms and sterile halls and flourescent lights, the kind of eternity where it feels like you've been there for hours instead of minutes. It's a pretty good vision of purgatory, especially if you're in pain or scared, because without windows to look out or televisions to look at to judge the passing of time (and there's usually crappy cell reception, too) there is a profound feeling of isolation and being left to one's fate.

This is essentially how I felt for the three hours it took for the ambulance to arrive and take me up to Jacksonville. About the best thing I can say about it is that the Ativan really took the edge off my impatience as well as my worry; I was essentially just "in the moment" for those three hours with my brain idling. Which, to be honest, is much better than it could have been, because me being worried and impatient and bored for three hours is not a pleasant thing.

So I chilled for three hours, and eventually the EMTs came to get me. I said goodbye to mom, they loaded me up into the 'bolance, and away we went... doing the speed limit. I remember being distinctly miffed that they weren't using the lights and siren, because Daytona to Jax is a long-ass drive that can take up to two hours depending on traffic and which side of J'ville your destination is. I thought, "Don't these guys want to get this done so they can get back to doing more important things, like saving lives or going off-shift?"

I may have asked for more Ativan, I'm not certain. I remember being bored enough for it to register that I was bored, and uncomfortable enough to feel uncomfortable, but not enough of either for me to really want to do anything about it. I may have dozed off at this point, because I was lying down and it was past my bedtime, and the motions of a moving vehicle tend to put me to sleep anyway, but if I slept I didn't dream and I didn't sleep for long because I was awake and aware when we pulled up to the hospital and I was wheeled into the ER.

I recall being disappointed that they wanted me to butt-scootch over to the ER bed rather than doing the thing I see on TV where the staff lifts the patient over, but maybe that's because I wasn't on a backboard. One thing they did do, though, was to cut my t-shirt off me. I was quite upset at this, because 1) I hadn't gotten any blood on it, 2) it was a damn comfortable shirt, and 3) I didn't see the need for it. I still had the EKG leads on from when I arrived at the first ER, and I figured they would cover everything except my face with a sterile sheet, so I couldn't understand why they did that. In fact, they had me take off my pants as well, so I figure "it's just policy" is probably the answer.

I didn't put up too much of a fight because I decided they wouldn't allow me to keep it on and I didn't want to go to the trouble of trying to get it over my head while holding my lips in place.

Then the plastic surgeon came to take a look at the damage and expressed a sentiment that can best be described as "Yes, this is adequate for disturbing my rest, but is not a challenge. I shall vanquish this easily." Then he pulled out his smart phone and asked if he could take a picture. I said, "Only if I get a copy" and gave him my email address. He took the picture but I still haven't gotten a copy of it. Jerk.

Then the nurse came in to prep me for surgery, and confirmed that I wasn't being wheeled up to an OR but would instead be treated there in the ER under local anesthesia. (So again, I felt like they cut my shirt off for nothing. I would have understood if they needed to put me under.) She asked me if I thought I would need anything, like more dilaudid, for the procedure. I explained that I didn't like how the dilaudid made me feel and that I was pretty good other than hurting in the places that were going to get localed, so as long as I could lie back and have something over my eyes I would probably be okay. Although could I get more ativan just to make sure I didn't get all antsy during the procedure?

I realize I sound like I'm suddenly an ativan addict but I promise, once I left the hospital I never had any cravings. I just really really liked having a chill pill that calmed me down and made me less impatient and squirmy.

The actual procedure is fuzzy, because I got the ativan IV and I put a towel over my eyes (because those surgical lights were fucking bright and right in my face) and so time just sort of... passed... in a twilight of not really sleep but not really awake either. I felt each injection of local anasthetic (and they really hurt, too -- the needles felt like they were barbed and the juice burned as it went in) and I was aware of each puncture of the suture needle, but it didn't really hurt -- or maybe it hurt but I didn't care? -- and it wasn't quite a dissociative "I am not in my body as this happens" state but I wasn't fully present for it, either.

It just kinda happened, and when it was done, it was hours later. Like at least two, maybe even three, even though it felt like 45 minutes and I'd barely moved. Then the surgeon took an "after" picture to go with his "before" one. I asked him how many stitches it was, and he said "Oh, somewhere between 50 and 60. I tend to lose count after a dozen or so."

Then he said that "The surgery went well. Your skin came together in a good approximation", and I started to freak out because I wanted something more than "approximately".  He explained it, but I'm going to quote my friend Wendi Bragg who has some experience with Doctor Speak:

We are used to thinking of "an approximation" as "close enough" or "something that resembles" or even "something half ass that's the best we can do".

Whereas the surgical definition of approximation is "bringing tissue edges into desired apposition for suturing." So approximation may be poor, adequate, or good.

What he was telling you was that he was able to put everything back where it was supposed to be, without getting "creative". And that's an excellent situation to be in.

So apparently, " a good approximation" meant I AM FUCKING AWESOME from this surgeon. And that's a good thing, because I understand that mouth injuries are really, really difficult to repair because not only do they have the eating and stretching thing going on, but the inside and outside of the mouth heal at different rates and if things aren't done properly there can be puckering and wrinkles along the scar line. This is why I didn't just get a plastic surgeon, I got an OMS (Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon) and these guys are rock stars, because in order to become an OMS you're looking at about 15 years of school:

• 4 years pre-med
• 4 years dental school
• 4 to 6 years of surgical residency

I don't even want to think about how big his student loans are.

Then he hit me with a doozy. I don't recall his exact words, but they went something like "While the surgery went well and I have every confidence in my abilities, the damage was extensive and there's a small chance that the skin could be too traumatized to survive. So keep an eye on it in case it changes color, starts to smell funny, or oozes anything other than blood."

Because what I really needed to hear after a traumatic evening and a long surgery was that there was a chance it could all be for nothing and I could get gangrene of the face.

Yay. Believe you me, that worry kept me up at night, especially when it began to scab over.

After that was done, the nurse came to see again. She had me fill out the admission paperwork and gave me some disposable scrubs to wear home. I asked for some breakfast because it was now 6 am and I was starving. Then I asked to use the bathroom because I really needed to pee (and to be honest, I wanted to see my face).

I discovered a few things in those few minutes:

1. It was really hard to talk. Why, you'd almost think someone had sewn my mouth shut. 
2. In addition to being a bloody, stitched-up mess, I was swollen damn near  everywhere on my mouth as well as my right cheek. I looked like a monkey who had gone a few rounds with a professional boxer. 
3. If your lips are swollen and your mouth is stitched tight, it is really difficult to open your mouth wide enough to get food in. Even though I had been given scrambled eggs, I ended up essentially shoving them between my lips with my fingers. I ended up wearing a lot of that food, as it smeared over my lips and fell onto my chest. 

It was a very effective "This is what your life is going to be for the indefinite future, so you'd better buckle up, buttercup" moment. 

After that, I dozed for a bit until a family friend drove my mom up to Jax to get me. The nurse handed me a washcloth on the way out -- a thin white one, and definitely NOT as good as the plus red one the other ER threw out -- because my sutures were oozing blood and it was running down my neck. There's something irritating about walking out of an ER while still bleeding, but I was ready to go home and go to sleep, because I'd been up for 24 hours.

They put me on a BUNCH of antibiotics (two different pills plus twice-daily doses of triple antibiotic ointment, and whatever injections they gave me in the various ERs). They also gave me a prescription painkiller which I never took, because after the surgery it didn't hurt that much and I could control it with Tylenol or Advil.

You know the rest of the story via blog posts and Facebook updates. The skin never became necrotic, the stitches came out 2 weeks later (a huge relief), and things slowly got better. I'm told I'm healing well, and will see the local plastic surgeon some time in January, because the swelling is still going down and he won't see me again until it's gone. I'm still worried about some nerve damage because of loss of sensation on parts of my face, but that just might be because they're swollen. I'm back to about 99% full function -- the only thing I can't easily do is open my mouth really wide, like at the dentist's office, and the surgeon told me in no uncertain terms that I was NOT to do that until he said I could.

That's about everything I can think of. If you have questions, ask. 

Mom Means Well, But...

I had a bad day yesterday. I shall spare you the details; suffice it to say that it involved traffic and the Post Office and ended with me loathing humanity as a whole. It took me most of the evening, and several glasses of rum, to descalate from "I wish they were all dead" to "I suppose they can be allowed to live if they promise not to bother me ever again."

I had high hopes for today. However, the world managed to quite expertly dash them via the unexpected vector of My Mother.

Here are things you should know about my mother:

• She is a mammal. 
• She is easily frustrated. 
• When in the grip of high emotion, she either yells, cries, or both. 
• She doesn't understand how computers work, to the extent that I've stopped telling her how to attach a picture to an email* and I just stop whatever I'm doing and do it for her. 

Today, mom asked me to take her to Walgreens because they're running a special on photographs (75 for $10) and she wanted pictures that had been taken with the digital camera turned into hardcopy. I think it's a bit strange, because the last time I've ever seen her looking at a photo album was literally last century, but mom gets what mom wants because Happy Mom, Happy Home. She wants hardcopies? OK, let's get hardcopies. 

I figured I would have to put the pictures on the hard drive for her, because she's had trouble with that before, but she surprised me by saying that she'd picked out what she wanted and had put them on the drive. 

• "The pictures you want are on the drive?" Yes. 
• "ONLY the pictures you want?" Yes. 
• "There's nothing else on there?" No. 

Well, color me shocked. I realize that sounds horribly dismissive of me, but again I point out that I'm the person called to attach a picture on the desktop to an email composed in Gmail. I was actually quite pleased that she'd done this on her own. The only thing I needed to do was come along and do whatever needed to be done to turn pictures on a thumb drive into photographs.

So we went, and either the Walgreens media computer has an interface that isn't as clear as it should be, or I'm getting old and newfangled technology is starting to confuse and frustrate me. But annoying as that was, it wasn't what ruined the day for me.

There was also the fact that mom told me she wanted two sets of prints -- one for me, one for her -- and therefore she'd duplicated every single picture on the thumb drive.  And then didn't understand when I told her that was unnecessary, that she could have just picked out the pictures and printed them twice. Nor did she understand that printing the entire thumb drive once was enough pictures for both of us, for reasons I cannot understand and which caused me to raise my voice (see below). But no, what ruined my day for me was that the photos she wanted me to look at, scroll through and select (why I couldn't have done this at home is beyond my comprehension) were pictures of the dog that attacked me and nearly bit my lip off.

Now, I want to phrase this next part very carefully:

• I believe PTSD exists. 
• I believe it is not a sign of weakness to have PTSD. 
• I'm not certain that I have PTSD (having not been diagnosed with it), so I do not feel qualified to claim to have it.

That said... looking at pictures of a dog who attacked me, and whose death I still feel guilty for, really fucked me the fuck up. I really, REALLY wanted to be anywhere else but there. I doubly didn't want to be there with mom hovering over my shoulder, asking me questions that try my patience. I triply didn't want to be there while trying to figure out how to get the goddamned discount when there's no obvious way to enter it and feeling stupid for it the entire time. So I'm basically grinding my back teeth and trying to regulate like I'm in Iron Man 3, when I see a clerk walking by. I shout "Hey, I need some help with this thing" and he guides me through it. I pick 'print every goddamn thing on the drive now so I can get this over with', he shows me how to apply the discount, and we leave.

As we're walking to the car, mom worries about how she isn't sure if we're going to get enough copies for both of us, and I just lose it. I don't want to explain that I just saw two goddamn copies of every goddamn picture on that goddamn drive and so of fucking COURSE she's going to get enough. My brain decides "Fuck it, we'll do it live" and I shout/scream/yell  I DON'T WANT PICTURES OF THE DOG THAT BIT MY FACE OFF!!

I probably even stomped my feet for emphasis, because that's mature.

This promptly hurts mom's feelings, not just because I just yelled at her, but because she thought she was doing a nice thing for my. "I thought you'd want a reminder of your dog!" she cried. Yes, literally crying, because I wasn't feeling shitty enough today.

My reply of "He stopped being my dog when he attacked me, mom, and I'm going to have a reminder of his handiwork on my face for the rest of my life." probably didn't help much. And then we sat in awkward silence in the car as both of us cried, because she's hurt and I'm stressed.

The diarrhea icing on this shit cake was the fact that I couldn't just go home. No, I had to drive into town (15 minutes), get a bottle of prescription toothpaste from my dentist while dropping off a Hanukkah card (X minutes, see below), drive back from town (15 minutes), buy the pictures (variable) and then drive home... all while neither of us are talking to each other and mom is doing that noisy "I've just been crying" breathing.

At the dentist, I talked to the gregarious receptionist who is one of those sweet women who is genuinely happy to see you and wants to chat, and who told me that I "didn't look so bad."

Now I'm not sure if I can speak for other people, so I'm not going to tell you that you should never say this to someone who's suffered an injury like this. What I will tell you is that you should instead say something like "It's healing really well. I'll bet no one will be able to tell what happened once it's all better."

I say this because while I'm sure the sweet lady meant "It's healing well," what it actually sounded like was "Wow, from the way your parents were going on I expected it was SO much worse! This is practically nothing in comparison."  This makes me feel like they're saying I'm some kind of hysterical drama queen who is overreacting over a minor injury.

All of this, mind you, while they're gawking at the wreckage of my face. I literally do not know which is worse, the dismissal of it all or being looked at like I'm a sideshow freak. You'd think the two would be mutually exclusive, but apparently they aren't.

This sort of thing just really pushes my buttons, because my reaction to this kind of statement has been to silently open my phone, scroll through the photos, and show them the one from the day I came home. The shudders and looks of horror and disgust are wickedly soothing. I'm actually at the point where I want the pictures the plastic surgeon took before he began suturing, just so I can show people the torn, dangling flesh and say "TELL ME IT DOESN'T LOOK THAT BAD. I FUCKING DARE YOU."

These kinds of reactions are why I don't want to show my face for the next few months... and yet, I have to get through Christmas. I've already been invited to a party (I don't know if I'm going or not, because the person for whom I'm a plus one won't answer me) and then there's the church service on the 24th. The entire congregation has been asking about me, and I just know they're going to be gawking and telling me it doesn't look bad.

Fuck me running. 

* Because she will take laborious notes, ask questions like "Now when you say 'click and hold', do you mean right click or left click?", and it will take 10 goddamn minutes to explain a 30 second process. 

The Night My Face Was Ruined

(Continued from The Day My Dog Bit Me)

There are a few things you ought to know about me.

• I'm good in emergencies because I don't freeze and I'm pretty good at solving problems on the fly. 
• But if I don't have any problems to solve or tasks to complete, I become a bundle of anxious energy. 
• When I am anxious or scared (or angry), I talk -- loudly and in great quantity. It's my main stress relief, probably because if I'm thinking about talking I'm not thinking about how bad things are and/or what else could go wrong. 
• I absolutely HATE waiting. 

As you have probably figured out, I had nothing to do BUT wait as mom drove me to the hospital. I was sitting there, full of adrenaline and with no problems to solve and nothing to focus on but my shredded, bleeding face. Which meant I talked the entire time to the ER. 

I'm not gonna lie, I threw myself one heck of a pity party. Here were some popular refrains:

• Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?
• This is my own damn fault. I talked about how I was happy. I called attention to my happiness and so the universe balanced things out, because when I talk about good things they go away. 
• Why did he bite me? I didn't do anything wrong. 
• He is NOT my dog any more. MY dog wouldn't have bitten me. 
• I'm not going to demand he be put down. That's a decision you (mom) will have to make. But he's not my dog and I don't want him around me anymore. 
• I'm a public speaker. Will I even be able to talk again? And if so, will anyone still want to look at me?
• Oh god. I'm going to be permanently disfigured, aren't I? I didn't think it was possible to be uglier than I am, but now I'm hideous. 
• How am I ever going to afford any of this? Not just the ER bills, but what if I need surgical reconstruction of my face?

Put those on loop for about 20 minutes and that's what it was like in the car. Mom was trying to reassure me, but another thing you should know about me is that when I am deep in the shit I am completely immune to being reassured:

• It's fine.  My FACE is in TATTERS! This is the exact opposite of 'fine'!
• All right then, you will be fine!  I'm in pain, I lost my dog, and I don't know if I'm missing parts of my face. 
• Everything will work out. You don't know that! You're not a doctor!
• We'll be there soon. Well, drive faster!

I'm basically a "mean drunk without the booze" when I'm like this, because everything is awful and you're bullshitting me like all first responders do and I don't believe your filthy lies so someone please tell me how truly fucked I am right now because I am imagining some really awful things that positive words just aren't banishing. 

It's kind of a wonder that my family still speaks to me, if I'm being honest. 

Mom dropped me off at the ER and went to park the car. I walked in, the front desk nurse said "Can I help you?" and I lowered the washcloth from my face just enough to give her the full effect and said "A dog ate my face and I'm bleeding all over."

The good news is that I didn't have to fill out any paperwork first (although she did ask for my name and telephone number. Given that my last name isn't English and I was talking through bloody shreds, this was frustrating, and for the first time out of many I wished I had my phone with me, because it held my ID and I could just hand that to her). The bad news is that she still had to take my blood pressure and pulse before I could get back to see the doctors, and I'm reasonably sure that if I hadn't had a mouth injury she'd have tried to take my temperature too. You just can't escape some bureaucracy...

Fortunately we got through the foreplay pretty quickly and I was ushered back to a room. I had no fewer than two nurses there, and the first thing they did was to take my red washcloth from me and throw it away in the biohazard bag. I was upset by this, but apparently not upset enough to make a scene about it. Mainly I was thinking  "But I can clean that! The blood won't even show!... ah, fuck it, it's not that important and I want them concentrating on me. But dammit, what a waste."

They replaced my red washcloth with something that was thinner than a washcloth but thicker than a gauze pad (and white, of course. My brain seized on that as being important. "You can see all the blood!" Although seeing the blood was probably deliberate, and it was disposable anyway, my brain didn't think of that) and then had me hold my lip-shred as low as I could without letting them dangle -- they didn't need to tell me, but it was pretty obvious that they were concerned the pieces might finish tearing and fall off if I let them dangle -- and then used two or three big syringes of saline to irrigate my lips. 

I kept asking them how it looked, and if I had any pieces missing, and their replies were "We've seen worse" -- which didn't trip my BS meter, because this was an ER and so of course they'd seen worse, and it wasn't a trite reassurance -- and "We aren't doctors, but it looks like you're in one piece." Once they'd finished irrigating my wounds, they told me to keep the now-wet cloth up to my face, because they didn't want anything to dry out. 

Then the main nurse (I don't know how these work, but to use military parlance, this guy was clearly a sergeant or higher while the other two were corporals at best) came in, hooked me up to various stuff, asked how I was doing, etc. 

"Well, I'm in pain, and I'm scared shitless, and my face is torn up and bleeding." So naturally he bled me some more by taking several vials of blood for testing. Then he asked how long ago I'd had a tetanus shot, and I answered "Seven years ago," and I was told I'd get another one. 

Around about this time the nurse-receptionist came in, because Papierkram, bitte, and I politely snarled that I was in no condition to fill it out, but my mother had driven me here and was probably in the waiting room, so please send her back and she'll fill out the forms. 

It's kind of amazing what kind of behavior you can get away with when you're bleeding. 

So mom came back, and did all the paperwork BS, and the doctor finally came in to take a look at me. He announced that the damage was too extensive for him to suture and that it would take a plastic surgeon. However, none of the plastics who worked at that hospital were there that night, or even on-call, and he'd have to find another hospital with a plastic surgeon who would see me that night. 

He did however prescribe both a painkiller (dilaudid) and an anti-anxiety medication (ativan), both intravenously. 

• Dilaudid is like the most glorious nausea ever. I felt like I was on the urge of throwing up, but I knew I wouldn't because my stomach wasn't spasming; and I felt dizzy and disoriented and headachey. What was odd was that I knew I felt these awful things -- I wasn't numb -- I simply didn't care. It was like my body said "Yeah, I feel like I'm going to puke and pass out, but who gives a shit?"
• Ativan, though, is some good stuff. I never asked for more dilaudid, but I asked for more ativan later. It's too bad it can be habit-forming, because I'd like a prescription for that when I'm stressing out about life and wanting to scream and throw things. I don't know if I can describe its effects other than "I started to chill out and stop thinking such negative thoughts. I was calm enough to be bored."

Then came a lot of waiting. I remember wishing I had my phone again, because I had nothing to do except wait to hear which hospital would take me, and if I had a phone I could talk to people on Facebook about what I was going through. 

Oh, and probably take the grossest selfie ever, because I was chilled enough that I had accepted the fact I was in professional hands and they'd take care of me. After all, they were getting me a plastic surgeon to stitch me up!

Then something happened which was almost, but not quite, wonderful. Thanks to the ativan, and thanks to mom being there and being concerned about me, I figured "You know, if I'm ever going to come out to her, now might be the time. She's probably not going to freak out too terribly because she's still concerned about me, and if she does there are doctors here." Also, if things go weird and I need to abort the conversation, I can blame them on the drugs later. 

But of course I just can't tell her straight out "Mom, I was born in the wrong body. I'm transgender. I wish I had been born a girl," I have to work my way up to it. I started off by saying "Mom, if I end up staying in the hospital for days, please don't go into my room to get me clothes or anything."

Mom knows I value my privacy, so instead of asking me why, she just nodded and said "Okay" in the same way she'd say "Well, if you WANT to be uncomfortable, that's on you."

Silence. 

"You're not going to ask me why? You aren't curious?"

"Of course I'm curious, but I figured if you wanted me to know, you'd have told me."

Now,  I remember saying "It's because if you go in there, it will change how you feel about me," but Mom has since told me that she remembers me saying "If you go in there, you won't love me any more." I think my version is more accurate, but she got the gist of it. 

I was working my way up to explaining that if she went into my room, she'd find wigs and makeup and women's clothing, and for once it seemed like she was really listening to me, not just hearing but truly listening and processing, and maybe it was because I was injured but there seemed to be a lot of tenderness and love at the moment. 

...and right when I thought maybe I could tell her, the doctor walks in to tell me that there's a plastic surgeon in a hospital 90 minutes away, but that I need to get there via ambulance, and the soonest one of them could transport me would be 2 am. 

It was 11:30 pm when we were told this.

I asked if mom could just drive me herself, and was told no, because I might pass out or have a bad drug reaction or et cetera, and I needed to wait to be taken. I went along with this mainly because mom is terrible with directions, especially at night, and I couldn't use GPS because I didn't have my phone. Besides, I knew mom would want to get to bed, so when the ambulance came she headed home.

By this time the dilaudid had worn off, and I felt that the connection we had was gone and I didn't want to try again and be interrupted again by nurses checking on me, taking my blood, etc.

It was a very long wait, because the ambulance didn't arrive at 2 am; it arrived at 2:45 am and we didn't leave the hospital until 3 am.

My next post will be about getting stitched up by the plastic surgeon in Jacksonville. 

The Day My Dog Bit Me

Today marks 5 weeks to the night that my mother's dog attacked me. 

I've tried to write about this before, but it was painful because I kept crying. In fact, that's one of the reasons I didn't post anything last week: I tried to write about this at the one month mark, but it coincided with my monthly depression, and I felt I needed to take a mental health break from writing in order to clear my head.

I acknowledge that no one is forcing me to talk about. Heck, no one has even asked me what happened, and that's a credit to them. I just feel like I need to get this off my chest. I don't know why I feel this way, but I do. Perhaps it's a kind of closure.

It was Tuesday, Oct 10, 10pm. I know what time it was because mom always turns off the TV and starts her bedtime preparations around 10, but it takes her between 30 and 45 minutes to actually get to bed. During that period, our dog Heath always became restless, and so I would play with him until it was time for him to get his teeth brushed and go to bed.

Yes, we brush our dogs' teeth. It does wonders for their breath and oral health. 

And yes, I would play with him right before bedtime. Dogs have this amazing ability to go from zero to 60, and 60 to zero, in seconds. 

So this night, like every night, Heath came to get me to play with him. He'd always do this cute little awroo-roo sound that wasn't a quite a howl and it was his universal code for "Play with me!" Some nights I'd find it annoying, especially if I was trying to get work done, or if I was tired and wasn't in the mood, but most nights I'd do it even if I didn't want to because I know too well how short a dog's life is and that I'd regret not playing with him while he was alive more than I'd regret the time lost, and that I'd miss playing with him while he was gone.

And now I'm crying again. Shit.

So he came to get me, and we played the usual games. Heath was an unusual dog in that he always needed to be the center of attention, always needed all the toys, hated to share.. but still loved to play. His ideal form of play was for him to get a toy, and for me to act like I wanted it and try to get it, but never actually take it from him. We played for a bit, and when he got a bit too stimulated I stopped with the hijinks and moved to generalized attention like petting, scritches and kind words.

He was sitting behind my chair in the family room, with a plush toy in his mouth. He was always a nice sitter and he looked very cute holding the toy like that, so I did something that both I and my mother have done literally countless times since we first got him back in 2009: I leaned forward to give him a kiss on the nose.

I had no idea that a dog could move that quickly, especially one with a plush toy in its mouth.

I'm actually not sure if I ever kissed him or not. All I'm aware of is moving up to his nose, while saying my usual "What a sweet boy", and the rest is a blur and a flash of pain before I'm holding my shredded lips in my hands and bleeding all over the carpet.

Here's what I have been able to reconstruct, based upon where the wounds were and where I found things later:

1. He bites me in the upper lip on the center-left side. Although this split my lip in two places, this was a relatively minor wound as it only needed external stitches. This is probably because it was his incisors that caught me. 
2. My head instinctively jerks up and to the left. This was unfortunate because it presented the dog with my lower right lip, and this was where the damage was most severe, likely due to a combination of one of his canines getting a grip on my cheek and my head continuing to move. 
3. My head jerks to a stop because I have a 90 pound dog attached to my face. My glasses go flying, although I don't realize this at the time. 
4. He lets go. 
5. I realize I am in pain. To be clear, my body registered the pain when he first bit me, but all of this occurred in what felt like less than a second. If you've ever cut yourself, sometimes you see the cut and have enough time to think "Oh shit, this is going to hurt" before the pain hits, and this was similar; I felt the pain before my brain could process any of it. What's strange is that it didn't feel like a bite; it felt hot, like I was being burned. I also want to associate bright light with the event, but that's probably just my brain trying to integrate the blurry motion of the attack with the heat of the pain. 
6. I realize the dog has bitten me.
7. I see the blood on the floor. 
8. I bring my hands up to my mouth and feel strips of bloody flesh hanging from my mouth.
9. I see the blood pooling in my hands. 
10. I realize "Oh, shit, this is serious."

This is the moment when time catches up to me and I have full memories and can act. I literally don't know how much time passed, because in my memories it happens all at once, like information coming in parallel. I don't see how it could have taken longer than two seconds, although I suppose it could have. On the other hand, if you told me it took a second or less, I wouldn't be at all surprised. 

I ran to the bathroom where mom was brushing her teeth, saying (shouting?) "I need to go to the Emergency Room!"  

Mom asked "What happened?", so apparently I didn't make a sound while I was getting bitten, which is something I find odd. 

"Heath bit the shit out of me!" I said, coming into the bathroom to look for something to stop the bleeding. "I'm going to need stitches." I noticed how much blood was dripping from my hands onto the bathroom floor and make some strange split-second decisions:

• I'm bleeding like crazy. 
• Fortunately, it's not spurting like an arterial wound. 
• Head wounds always bleed like crazy, so since it's not spurting, I'm not going to bleed to death any time soon. 
• I probably don't want to use a traditional gauze pad because it'll soak through instantly and I really don't want to put direct pressure on my shredded mouth. 
• However, I need something to catch all this mess. 
• I can't get to the blood-stopper gauze in the trauma kit because my hands are busy holding my face in place (at this point, I don't know how extensive the damage is, I just know that it's BAD) and I don't want to talk mom through getting it out because 1) she's terrible at taking directions under pressure and 2) I want her to concentrate on getting me to the ER. 
• I look over to the hamper and see a clean red washcloth. I very clearly think "Oh good, it's red, that means it won't stain as badly". In retrospect, this is a very odd thing to be concerned about, but at the time I felt like this was a mission-critical piece of information. 

I told mom to hand me the washcloth and then did a sort of juggling act with my hands so that one of them was always holding the strips of flesh as I got the blood-catcher underneath them. 

This is the exact moment when I realized "Oh, shit, I might have pieces of my face missing." I don't know if I said this out loud or not, but I remember asking mom to take a quick look to see if she sees any parts of my face out in the room. I sent her to look because I didn't know if the dog would attack me again or not. I'm embarrassed to admit that it never once crossed my mind to wonder "What if the dog attacks her?" My only defense is that I was in survival mode, and that induced a form of selfishness; had I thought the dog was a danger to her I wouldn't have asked her, but it literally never crossed my mind because I was thinking only of myself at that moment. It's probably a survival instinct and therefore completely understandable, but it still bothers me.

At this point, mom was either getting dressed to drive me to the ER or was waking dad up, I'm not sure. There's a long story here regarding why dad can't just drive me, but the short version is:

• Mom and dad sleep in separate bedrooms;
• Dad went to sleep 2 hours prior;
• Dad has Parkinson's and so doesn't react well to sudden changes, like being woken from a sound sleep;
• My car isn't driveable due to electrical problems;
• Dad's car is parked behind mom's;
• I can't drive his car because I'm holding my face together;
• Therefore, dad needs to move his care before we can go to the ER. 

I went looking for my shoes, my glasses, and my phone which had my ID in the case. I found two out of the three; the shoes were where I'd left them, but I couldn't find my phone because I didn't know where my glasses were. I eventually found them lying on the ground, ten feet away from where I'd been standing when I was bitten.

By the time I'd found my glasses and given up looking for my ID, dad had staggered out of his bedroom wearing only a pair of sweatpants. (He sleeps nude, so thanks for small favors there.) For whatever reason -- Parkinson's, groggy from sleep, both -- he couldn't figure out how to unlock the front door. Our front door has a deadbolt, you see, but the deadbolt is key-operated because for some dumb reason, there’s a window right next to the door. Since a burglar could easily smash that window and then open the lock, we keep the key out of arm’s reach.

Dad either couldn't figure out the lock, or was moving too slowly to make me happy -- I was scared and in pain and bleeding all over the place, and a grown-ass man couldn't open a lock in a timely manner, so I feel somewhat justified in that attitude -- so I took the key from him to unlock the door my own damn self.

Unfortunately, I had rather a lot of adrenaline in my body at the time, and "putting a key into a lock" requires more fine motor control than you'd think. I remember, quite vividly, missing the key hole and hitting the plate around it several times. I don't know how many times this happened; for all I know, it could have been only 2-3 times, but it felt like a dozen or more.

Again, this is where my brain gets weird, because I actually seriously considered breaking the window in order to facilitate getting the door open. I don't know why I thought this, because it's not like it would be easier to open on the other side; I think I was just scared and frustrated and willing to destroy anything which thwarted me. (It's probably a good thing I didn't have a crowbar nearby.)

In hindsight, what I should have done was have my father go out through the garage. That's where mom keeps her car, so we were going to open it anyway. But I wasn't thinking about that at all; I had tunnel vision and could only think of one way of getting outside.

I did eventually get the key in the lock by taking a deep breath and forcing myself to calm down before I finally got it inserted and the door opened. I turned around to do... something, I'm not sure what... and Heath was coming up to me to investigate the commotion. He wasn't aggressive any more, he just seemed curious about the noise and the door opening and all the humans scurrying around. This was weird, and is part of the reason I think that him biting me was some kind of psychotic break, because 1) while I know dogs don't have much in the way of long-term memory, this was recent enough that it shouldn't have passed out of short term memory and 2) in my 40+ years of owning dogs, every single time of them has accidentally hurt us, it either runs away to hide or acts submissive. Either way, the dog knows it has messed up. But he wasn't acting like he even knew what had happened.

Meanwhile, I was having none of it. "Get away from me! You're not my dog anymore!" I shouted, and he ran off. Then I heard a sound behind me and saw my father lying on the ground just outside the front door. He has fallen and broken his hip once before, and I figured because it was a fall onto concrete and because it would be just my luck, that he'd broken his hip again. I believe my exact words were "Fuck this, I’m calling an ambulance." as I stomped my way to the house phone. The only reason I didn't make the call is because I heard my mother coming around from the garage and helping him up; apparently she'd gotten the garage door open and her car started, and wanted to see what was causing the delay.

Incredibly, dad didn’t break anything when he fell, so he managed to get to his car and back it up. I made one final pass to look for my phone, and then I went out and got into mom's car.

All told, the entire thing probably took about five minutes, but it felt like it took about 30. The entire thing with dad probably would have been rather funny in a "Benny Hill total clusterfuck" kind of way if I hadn't been bleeding and scared at the time. 

This post is already pushing 2500 words and I haven't even gotten to the hospital yet, so let's save that part for my next post. 

Medical Bills Update

A huge THANK YOU!!! with hugs to everyone who donated to my GoFundMe. As of today, I have paid off the first two bills (for the initial ER visit and for the  doctor there who treated me -- why the doctor's services weren't bundled with the ER bill is a mystery to me) in full and  managed to get a discount on both due to being able to pay them immediately, in full, and in cash.

I talked them down to $643.80

I'm still waiting to get the bill from the ambulance drive from initial ER up to the hospital in Jacksonville, that ER's bill, and the plastic surgeons's bill) but I am confident I'll have enough money to pay those off as well.

The big question is "How much will it cost to get my face back to normal?" and that's not something which can be answered now, because as explained earlier, that has to wait until 2018.

Regardless of what procedures are required and what they will cost, I am confident that you lovely people will help me get through this difficult situation. While I know I cannot repay you (some of you donated anonymously, and some wouldn't accept payment from me anyway), I hope that one day I can pay you back with entertaining words, commitment to rights, and of course my friendship.

Thank you all!

State of the Erin Report

I had my second appointment with the plastic surgeon today. The diagnosis is mixed but overall positive. 

The Good News: All of the sutures have been removed, along with a really nasty-looking thing that was either a giant scab or a bit of dead scar tissue(or maybe some of each). I don't know if the removal of the sutures and stiff scar tissue really does make it easier to talk and open my mouth, or if it's just psychosomatic, but either way I'm taking the victory. I was actually able to eat a real sandwich for supper, and it was GLORIOUS. 

The Middling News: Right now things look good for function, but form is iffy. The area to the side of my lower lip is still swollen and is healing slower than expected. There's also a piece of scar tissue remaining that is so thick it's almost cartilaginous, which will need to be removed once the swelling subsides. There's also a tear right at the corner of my mouth, which essentially widens my mouth by approximately 1/3 inches. I'm not sure why this wasn't stitched up; if I had to guess, I'd say it was because my mouth was a swollen mess and the doctor couldn't see it or get to it. I had hoped this would heal with the rest of me, and I've been trying to speak out of the undamaged side of my mouth in order to encourage those parts to fuse back together, but the doctor said this might be my "new anatomy", which was kind of heartbreaking. I did however pester him until he admitted that if the lower lips needs more surgery, he can probably fix the mouth since he's basically in the neighborhood. 

The Unfortunate News: By the surgeon's estimation, it looks like it'll be at least two months before the swelling goes down enough to warrant seeing him again, and then we can see what kind of surgery I may need. I've been told, point blank, that there WILL be scarring; how bad it is, and therefore whether I'll need cosmetic or reconstructive surgery, is something we won't know until my face has fully healed. And then there's finding a place in his surgical schedule, recovering from that surgery, etc. 

All of this means it will literally be next year before I stop looking disgusting (no, this isn't a self-image thing; I literally have what looks like a large open sore the size of my thumbnail right on my face, and it's nasty) and then who knows how long it'll be until I can make public appearances as Erin Palette. I hope that I will have all this finished and look presentable by the time the NRA Annual Meeting comes around (May 4-6), but I'm not holding my breath. If I don't look presentable, I have two equally unpleasant choices to make: go there anonymously (i.e. in drab) and not make any professional connections for Operation Blazing Sword, or just not attend at all. 

I suppose I'm fortunate that I have no speaking engagements booked, because the only way I'd feel comfortable making an appearance would be if I wore some kind of gaiter over the lower half of my face. 

http://amzn.to/2zm1FtI

Thoughts on Eating

Having been on a restricted diet of soft foods for two weeks due to my injury, I have realized a few things about food that otherwise might not have occurred to me:

1. Texture affects taste. You won't notice it at first, but after about a week, foods with the same texture will start to taste alike. I don't know if it's psychological, or texture interacts with taste buds, or maybe my tongue is just lazy, but pureed food has all started to taste the same and shredded food has all started to taste the same. The thing is I know that ham salad tastes different from tuna salad, but at this point my mouth is going "Okay, another meat salad meal, yawn" and having everything taste the same.
   
2. Chewing is more important than I thought. Related to the #1, I've come to the realization that the act of chewing increases the satisfaction level of food. Perhaps chewing releases more flavor, but I think it's more likely to be a deeply psychological or biochemical effect related to our predator heritage. Eating a thick, juicy steak just tastes fundamentally different from eating shredded steak, even if they're cooked in exactly the same manner.
   
3. Appetite fatigue is real.  Come dinner time, I am almost desperately hungry but I have a hell of a time finding anything I want to eat, because nothing looks or sounds good,  because it all feels the same in my mouth. All I want is to take a big bite of something and chew, chew, chew, and I can't do that. 

Just do me this one favor, gang: When you eat your dinner tonight, or lunch tomorrow, take a moment to savor the texture of each bite and the simple joy of chewing. 

My Status So Far

I know that a lot of you are worried about me. Thank you for that, and I'm sorry that I haven't been posting more regularly. When I saw the doctor on Tuesday, he asked me if I was depressed, and I responded with a dour "Considering the family dog disfigured me, I'd say I'm entitled to some depression while I heal, thanks." He acknowledged that I had a point. 

Instead of trying to reconstruct what's happened on a day-to-day basis since the past update, I'll just hit the important bits:

The swelling continues to diminish. 

My upper lip is mostly back to normal, although I have some numbness there (perhaps due to scar tissue, perhaps due to nerve damage -- I don't know). My lower lip and right cheek are still a scabby mess, but I can actually brush (gently) my teeth on that side, which is a big improvement. 

I can eat non-mush foods now.

I wouldn't say that I've graduated to solids like a big girl, but I no longer have to eat minced foods like tuna salad and applesauce. So long as it'll fit inside my mouth and doesn't require a lot of chewing, I can eat it, so now I've moved up to shredded foods. 

As soon as I'm able, I am eating the biggest steak I can fit into my mouth.

I don't seem to have any muscle damage. 

This was imparted to me with a cheerful "Good news!" tone. While I don't disagree that it's good news, it's hard for me to be cheery when I have no idea how mangled my mouth will be when it heals. I am terribly worried that I will have a speech impediment or otherwise sound strange even after I have healed. 

Some of the stitches have come out.

The ones on the inside of my mouth are made of vicryl and are slowly dissolving. I'm trying not to pull them out, but my tongue keeps worrying at them. 

The ones on my upper lip were removed by the plastic surgeon's assistant yesterday, and I feel like I have greater range of motion and can talk more understandably. I don't know if this is true, coincidental with reduced swelling, or just psychosomatic, but regardless this is a big win for me. 

Other stitches have to wait until the 30th.

That's my next appointment with the plastic surgeon. Maybe then I can get an idea of what needs to be done next. 

I'm told that there WILL be scarring. 

Fucking YAY. I'm a transwoman who was never particularly pretty to begin with, and now I have scars on my cheeks and lips. I'm probably going to require some degree of cosmetic surgery, and hopefully I can afford that with the money you lovely folks have donated. 

I still have survivor's guilt.

Or whatever this is called. Every other time we've had to put down a dog, it was because they were sick or injured. I felt like it was the kindest thing to do,  because I was taking away their pain. But this dog was healthy, and easily had 2 more years left. Putting him down may have been the right thing to do, but it doesn't FEEL like it was right. 

I still wonder what I could have done differently. What subtle signs did I miss? What line did I cross. 

Maybe this is what it's like to be a parent whose child is convicted of a capital crime, where you love them and don't want them to go (heart) but still understand that it's just and responsible to remove them so that they don't hurt others (head). 

This sucks, and I hate it. 

Escape Is My Armor

This whole dog-mauling incident has convinced me of something I've suspected for a long time now:  I'm really, really good at suppressing the fuck out of unpleasant feelings through the time-honored tactic of distracting myself. 

I've always been in love with the fantastic, and I've always preferred playing to working, so it's ridiculously easy to engage my imagination or otherwise immerse myself in something (a game, a book, a TV series) to keep from thinking about something unpleasant. In a lot of ways, I detach from myself and enter the world of the show, like the geekiest out of body experience ever. 

It's much more difficult to do with physical pain, of course. I can't enjoy doing much of anything with a headache -- the constant physical reminder of "Hey, this hurts" makes it hard for me to detach from myself -- but if the pain is emotional, I can block it out with escapism. I'm the one who hurts, you see, so if I stop being me, I stop hurting. 

In related news, I've been watching a lot of television. I thought Archer was pretty terrible for most of season 1, but by season 2 either the Stockholm Syndrome had fully kicked in or the writing had become a lot better, the jokes funnier and the characters less annoying. 

As for the rest of me, the swelling is starting to lessen down, especially on the less-injured part of my face. I can now open my mouth half an inch, rather than a quarter, which makes eating and drinking much less onerous. Mind you, chewing is still a lot of work, because I can only chew with one side of my mouth and even then can't move my teeth very far, but I can at least get larger morsels of food past my lips and fuck me running that is a quality of life improvement. Think about that for a moment: I'm just grateful I can eat my mush from a grown-up size spoon. 

Dog Mauling Follow-Up

This is Friday, right? The days are blurring into each other.

Tuesday Night - Wednesday
Our 90-pound Shepherd-Lab mix attacked me on Tuesday night, around 10 pm. (Maybe I'll write about what happened in greater detail at some point, but not today.)  We got to the ER at about 10:30, but that hospital didn't have a plastic surgery unit and the doctor felt it was important I get stitched back together ASAP, so they transferred me via ambulance to a hospital in Jacksonville.

The problem with that is we were told this at 11 pm, but the ambulance didn't arrive until 2 am. Then there was an hour-plus ride to Jacksonville, then however long it took to get me processed and stitched up. Long story short, by about 6:30 am they'd put in between 50 and 60 stitches ("Past a dozen, I lose count" the doctor said when I asked him) and then I had to wait for my family to come get me because mom went home to sleep when I went into the ambo.

They picked me up around... 8:30? 9 am?... and then it was another drive through Jax morning rush hour traffic. We got home about 10:30-11ish. I made my Facebook post and went to bed. I woke up in the afternoon, and just sort of floated through a haze of pain and regret and exhaustion.  Sometime during all of this I wrote Wednesday's blog post and the GoFundMe organized by Matt House kicked into gear.

Went back to bed around 9 pm, because sleep is a fantastic way to avoid emotional turmoil. Even if I'm not actually asleep, there's something about the twilight haze of snooze that helps me repress the shit out of things -- I find that I can be consciously aware of things but not really feel them, i.e. "I know that I've just been mauled by the family dog, and I may be scarred the rest of my life, but as long as I'm in bed here none of this really affects me."

Thursday
Wake up feeling no better, but no worse either, so I have that going for me I guess. My face is still swollen, still a bloody mess (my stitches ooze and my pillowcase looks like the inside of a used band-aid), and still hurts, although not so much that I need prescription stuff though; I get by with Advil, Tylenol, etc. Believe me, I know what pain is; I've had so many kidney stones that I've lost count (i.e. over a dozen), and this is maybe a 2 or a 3 on the pain scale. I've had migraines that hurt worse, although there's a definite "quantity has a quality of its own" thing going with something that hurts nonstop.

Eating is still difficult and slow -- partly because I can't fully open my mouth, and partly because it's hard to chew without pulling on my stitches, so whatever goes into my mouth has to be mashed by my tongue against the roof of my mouth. I end up eating things like applesauce, fruit cups, jello, scrambled eggs, etc. About the most solid thing I can eat right now is tuna salad. 

I look like a monkey who's gone several rounds with a boxer and lost. I didn't think I could look any MORE hideous in the mirror, but I've managed it.

I still mumble when I talk. I fear that there's some nerve damage because, 24 hours later, I still have no feeling in the part of my face that was damaged the worst. (Basically, imagine a lip becoming a peninsula, with just a thin strand of flesh keeping it attached to my face.) I worry that this will change the way that I speak.

The dog who did this has been put down. This was a decision made by mom and the vet as I preemptively removed myself from that consideration because I felt I was too close to the issue to be rational. Even though I know none of this is my fault, I still feel guilty about this, as if maybe there was something I could have done to have prevented it and therefore saved me from injury and saved the life of the dog. Rationally, I know this is bullshit, but this is the realm of emotion and logic has no power here. 

It would have been easier if he'd been an aggressive asshole when I came back, but in typical Lab fashion (Labs seem to be the blondes of the dog world), he didn't seem to remember what happened and was acting happy to see me when I came back from the ER, all waggy tail and kissy tongue and generally acting like the sweet boy I used to know. That's where the guilt comes from; I know it's not my fault -- I KNOW -- but that doesn't make this any easier because it feels like I'm putting a sweet dog to death for a stupid mistake. 

I don't think I have PTSD as a result of this, but I realize I am much more aware of the teeth in our remaining dog's mouth when she moves to lick me. I think I'm going to let her come to me for a while, rather than the other way around. I do end up crying a lot, because everything sucks right now. 

About the only thing which doesn't suck, and the only thing keeping me from feeling like deep-fried shit, is the outpouring of love, concern and compassion by my friends. Not only am I getting messages of hope, hope, prayer, and support, the GoFundMe hit $5K in about 8 hours. Thank you so much!  I have no idea if I'm going to need further surgery, but I feel a lot better about my chances of affording it. 

Friday

Mom says the swelling is going down, although I'm probably too close to the issue, both figuratively and literally, to see the improvement. 

Wednesday I was just tired. Thursday I was sad because we put Heath down. Today... today I'm angry. Angry because I hurt, angry because my dog was fucking stupid and it killed him, angry because I'm injured and may be disfigured, angry because I need to eat mush with a fucking baby spoon, angry because I can barely talk above a low mumble and even that starts to hurt after more than a few minutes, angry because my mouth hurts every time I cough (or, worse, sneeze -- agony!), angry because I CAN'T EVEN SCREAM IN FRUSTRATION because doing so will rip the stitches in my mouth.

(Want to know how I feel? Clench your jaw tight, punch yourself in the delicates, and try to scream without unclenching that jaw. Let me tell you, it's distinctly unsatisfying when it comes to stress release.) 

I seem to oscillate between angry, angry-sad, sad-angry, and then angry again. Everything is frustrating. I'm stressed out. I didn't sleep well the night before, and I'm terrified that I'm going to be permanently disfigured and/or I will lose function with part of my mouth. 

And I'm REALLY FUCKING PISSED that the puppy who I loved BIT THE SHIT OUT OF ME. You stupid son of a bitch, I was kissing on your nose and you bit me! YOU KILLED YOURSELF OVER A NOSE KISS.

It's a really weird feeling, wanting to beat the crap out of a dead dog who I also dearly wish I could cuddle once more.

Looks Like I Jinxed It

Last night, my parents' 90-pound dog attacked me for no reason, savagely biting and partially severing my lips.

I went to the emergency room, whereupon they shipped me to a hospital in Jacksonville to have immediate reconstructive surgery. I have only just returned home.

I am fortunate in that no pieces were missing. The plastic surgeon said it was a "good approximation" and that's apparently a good outcome. I required over 50 stitches.

I have no idea if I will suffer scarring or loss of function. Right now I look like a zombie victim from The Walking Dead. I can only partially open my mouth and talking is difficult as half my lips are literally stitched together. Between that and the swelling, I can only open my mouth about a quarter inch. This means that non-liquid food need to be "smooshed through the food hole" like I'm a toddler and a fair amount of it ends up on my chin, my clothing, the table, etc.

Also, I'm pretty sure I suffered nerve damage because the mangled corner is numb and any topical anesthetic they gave me would have worn off by now (12+ hours later).

Right now my hospital bill is over $1,000 and that doesn't cover prescriptions (I have 5), follow-up appointments, stitch removal, and any additional plastic surgery needed to make my face look less horrifying.

My good friend Matthew House has set up a GoFundMe page if you'd like to contribute toward my medical expenses. Another good friend, Oleg Volk, has created an incentive to encourage people to donate $125 or more.