Tongues and Slugs

It is Day 8 after surgery and I finally am not completely aware of the pain/discomfort in the left side of my head!

I was a bit worried about the pain pills given my addiction tendencies. I mean, hello! Recovering alcoholic with replacement addiction issues! I could totally see myself turning into the Codeine Whore on the Street Corner, pimping my old, sad body out for the next mind-numbing fix of pain pills.

Mercifully, especially for my brother who would be horrified and is probably even now clutching his hair and shouting, "TMI! TMI!," the pills don't really do that much for me.

I got 40 of those oxycodone babies with a stern warning on the bottle not to exceed 8 in a 24 hour period. A little math there would show that I could have been done with them in 5 days and still been within prescription guidelines, but it is 8 days later and I still have about 8 pills left. There were a lot of 8's in the last couple of sentences. It must mean something significant, like I'm going to win the lottery in 8 days. I need to remember to buy a ticket.

A weird side effect of the CI surgery is that I have a super bad taste in the left side of my mouth. Apparently there is a taste nerve near the surgery site. There is also a facial nerve. While drilling, the doctor either had to go near or actually touch one of the two and he opted for the taste nerve. Good call, doctor. Seriously. Bad taste is better than a drooping face. I'm getting old and wrinkly enough; I don't need any help in that regard.

And now my tongue is all swollen and disgusted and feels like I burned it badly. Like when you gulp hot chocolate before it has cooled and end up frying the skin cells on your tongue. It hurts to brush my teeth. It burns! It burns us! Sorry, channeled a little Gollum there. I don't know if that - not the Gollum channeling, but the tongue issue - is from the taste nerve also or from the pain meds. Seems like I might have a sensitivity to oxycodone given that it makes me itch and another possible side effect for oxycodone sensitivity is a swollen tongue. Nice.

Makes me think of that Peanuts cartoon when Linus is all like "I'm aware of my tongue!" and makes Lucy aware of hers, so of course she wants to slug him a good one. Slug and tongue are not two words that reside in harmonious juxtaposition, by the way. Now I'm thinking of my tongue being slug-like. A huge, oversalted, dried out slug. But look on the bright side ... at least I'm not Codeine Whore!

MTC.