I've closed up the house already this morning, put a lot of water in the fridge, and continued the Air-flow Experiment, part 6.
Last night was challenging for both of us. Stephan got home on time, and I had been sleeping. I woke up without much pain medicine in my body, but pretty happy nonetheless. Stephan set me up to take a shower with a towel clipped to my neck to keep the stitches dry. He also washed my hair in the kitchen sink. He didn't sing or describe recipies like Julia Child the way my mom and dad used to, but having clean hair after a few days was wonderful. We did have a slight disagreement about just how bad he must have smelled in Bolivia when it was 3 weeks between showers...
Well, after I was clean and dry, it was time to change to bandages. He carefully took off the tape (getting my hair out of the way) and was an excellent nurse through the whole process. I looked in the mirror. It was good that I already had both hands wrapped around the towel bar. I had imagined about 3-4 stitches, maybe 1" long. That's not what I saw. I saw a long black line, that seemed to run from the center of my neck to the side of my jaw. I got sick, dizzy, grossed out, and so sad. I looked at Stephan and cried, "There's something gross and it's ME!!"
The fallout from the incident lasted about 25 minutes. Poor Stephan had worked 12 hours, gone grocery shopping, started cooking, was really hungry and sat with me, talking me down from being scared of my own skin.
I highly recommend this site for guided imagery to help anyone calm down or stay level headed around surgery or healing. Let me know if you use one of them and it works for you!
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