it's been 3 days since i had my wisdom teeth op!
it's been 3 days, no, 4 days, since i last ate something hard and relatively warm.
it's been 3 days since i've tasted blood on my tongue cos the stitches haven't healed yet.
it's been 3 days since i started to thank God wholeheartedly that i still have my sense of taste intact, and that i can still close my mouth.
it's been 3 days since i've been taking painkillers 3 times a day to take the pain of the wounds away.
it's been 3 days since i've been sleeping more than 12 hours each day cos hey, your body's supposed to recover faster with more sleep after all.
and since we're onto counting days and weeks and months and years now, do you know that it's about 3 years before i start to work?
3 years before i have to start contributing to my family's income.
3 years before i leave school and face yucky working life.
a year before i hit the big 2-0,
11 years before i hit the even bigger 3-0.
11 years to get married cos i want to have more than one kid and i don't want to be too old a mother or i'll miss out on my grandchildren's childhoods.
though i am sick of eating nothing but liquid food and baby oats, i am glad i can taste the butter in my porridge, glad i can taste the honey my mother puts into my oats and the chocolatey milo my father makes with brown rice, glad i can feel my tongue when i get up in the mornings, glad i can feel the jagged stitches at the back of my mouth when i run my tongue round my mouth, glad i can taste the irony blood as my gums bleed, glad i can feel the throbbing hurt in my jaw when i get up in the mornings, the effects of the painkillers gone.
so many things could've gone wrong during the op; the surgeon warned me that i might lose my sense of taste temporarily if he accidentally brushed the nerve in my lower jaw during the op. happily enough, my sense of taste hasn't deserted me the slightest bit.
i was scared stiff lying on the operating table. i didn't know if i would ever wake up again, didn't know if i would wake up to a bland world where my mouth was numb and cannot close, didn't know if i would feel the pain as the surgeon sawed through my jaw and pulled out the embedded teeth. so many thoughts running through my mind, and all i could do was entrust everything to God and pray as i freewheeled into unconsciousness as the anaesthetic took over my mind. and the next thing i heard was the sound of a baby wailing somewhere far in the distance. i felt the familiar prickle of irritation (my low tolerance for kids kicking in) and felt thoroughly glad to be alive to feel annoyed.
sigh the last few days have seen me lying in bed a lot and thinking a lot about nothing in particular again. my mind always hurtling at breakneck speed into nowhere and leaving me unrested when i get up cos it seems that it's been processing stuff the entire night.
i wish i didn't think so much about nothing, really. how can someone think about nothing, you wonder? simple, you just set your mind into thinking about something totally unfeasible and unrealistic, and very soon your thoughts will just start to freefall into something else and eventually become nothing.
i am going to sleep again soon. i do nothing but sleep these days. i think it's cos i'm scared i'll be awake when the effects of the painkillers wear away. i saw the stitches in my mouth the other day in the mirror and nearly fainted - the black stitches looked so fierce in the back of my mouth and i can feel the ulcers forming where the thread presses on the soft flesh of my mouth already. ugh.
