OMS Follow-up, Monday, June 29

Happy news, Jake had his follow-up at the Loma Linda Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Center and had the splints removed from his nose. Below is a picture, immediately post follow-up.

The process of removing the splints was quick and apparently painless, although I am assured that it felt "weird." That's not surprising, because it looked pretty weird. Those who've prepared calamari from scratch will have some perspective on this. Imagine you have a fresh squid and are preparing to remove the spine or "quill." Now, imagine that you are pulling the quill out of someone's nose with a hemostat. That's pretty much it. I was expecting some little tubes and what came out was as long as Denise's index finger, as evidenced by the following photo.
OK, that was pretty gross, but nothing like the rest of what came out, so we'll just drop that subject for now.

The other good news was that the doctor told Jake he no longer needs to elevate his head while sleeping. He's been pretty uncomfortable in bed and always looks like a contortionist by the morning, so I'm sure he'll welcome the option to sleep flat on his back.

We celebrated with lunch at Chili's. Well, Denise, Nick and I celebrated; Jake was not overly thrilled with the liquid options on the menu. He settled for a lemonade and a chocolate malt, which I thought was kind of a strange combination, but whatever works I guess.

Jacob is becoming increasing unhappy about the liquid diet. Not surprising, but unfortunate since he's only a week and a half in to a 6 week stretch.

He has been able to supplement his diet with some somewhat solid food (or at least liquids with a few incorporated solids). He gets to remove his elastics to brush his teeth, so he eats some chunky soup or whatever while the bands are off. Last night he had some red beans and rice (from a box, not my from scratch recipe) - I removed the casing from an Andouille sausage, minced it up in the food processor and added it to the pot to give him a little more protein. He seemed to enjoy that.

Tonight we are trying chili burgers. I thinned out a little canned chili with some beef stock and tomate juice, then pureed it with the stick blender. Grilled and chopped the burger in the food processor and also minced up a half a bun. So, the theory goes that he can take a spoon full of burger and bun, then wash it down with a spoonful of chili. I'm not optimistic.

(Update: The Chili Burgers were a success!?! At least he ate quite a bit and was generally please with the chili burger taste. He insisted that we all try some and it did, in fact, taste like a chili burger, albeit like a chili burger that had been pre-chewed by someone else.)

So, finally, here's a photo of Jake at home this evening, looking more than ever like himself, most likely because of his expression of annoyance at the photographer. He's not very tolerant of the Papa-razzi. (Sorry about that.)