I haven’t posted in a while, and I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps I’ve been stuck in a mental rut, unmotivated. I did recently speak with a psychiatrist and expressed that I felt I needed my dosage of Zoloft increased. After a handful of questions, my dosage was increased from 50mg to 100mg, and I’ve been taking the new dosage for about three weeks now. I do feel a difference in my energy levels, luckily.

I no longer dread having to take a shower or do simple tasks such as cleaning the litter boxes, washing dishes, or vacuuming; but I still feel lazy in that I choose not to do it instead of feeling unable to do it due to low energy, and I’m not sure what’s worse: not having the energy to do things or just choosing not to do things.

It is times like these where I reminisce being a child and not dealing with all of the current feelings and tasks I am now. I remember always having energy, always wanting to go out and socialize, and even wanting to clean.

I recently had all four of my wisdom teeth extracted, and let me tell you now: Listen to your dentist when they say to extract them before you turn 25! I turned 25 at the beginning of the pandemic and my wisdom teeth still weren’t bothering me too much at that point, so I pushed it off.

Starting about a month ago, I started getting more frequent tension headaches that would force me to call off work. These headaches lasted for, pretty much, the entire day. I spoke with a doctor, tried stretching and massages to relieve the tension in my body, but I still felt constant tension in my jaw. I’d crack my jaw to try to relieve any tension, which sometimes it worked, and other times it just made me concerned because it would crack really loudly. So I figured it was time to finally get my wisdom teeth out because I knew they were impacted and pushing against my other teeth and figured that’s probably what’s contributing to my headaches, especially now that I had felt them growing in a bit more.

I had my surgery exactly a week ago. I am over 25, and my recovery is not going smoothly. Supposedly, the pain should be decreasing with every new day and healing should be pretty linear. That is not my case. The first two days, I didn’t feel any pain at all, even after the anesthesia wore off. The third day, I woke up in excruciating pain and was worried that I had gotten an infection or dry socket, causing the sudden increased pain. The only way to manage the pain was to take the prescribed ibuprofen and Norco. The ibuprofen itself just didn’t cut it. The fourth day led to even more pain. The fifth day, I wasn’t in pain at all. I thought I had gotten over the hardest part of the healing process because I was feeling so much better. Boy, was I wrong.

Even though I felt fine and even went out to socialize, the pain returned before I went to sleep that night. The pain increased the following morning – enough that I had to take ibuprofen + Norco again just to manage the pain, and called off work. This is the point where I’m not sure if I’m feeling better each day or the ibuprofen + Norco is just masking the pain, because it seems like every other day, I feel worse pain.

It is now day 7 post-op and I woke up in pain and was pretty much about ready to cry with how frustrated my recovery has been going. It’s not going smoothly, nothing is linear, and I’m not even sure my incision sites are healing. The dissolvable sutures that were placed have all naturally come out, but there are still pretty clear holes where my teeth once were. Somewhere along day 3 or 4, one of the blood clots dislodged after I woke up. I didn’t even do anything, I just woke up and kept tasting blood in my mouth and when I went to rinse – voila, a chunky blood clot.

I’ve taken the rest of the week off work so I can just focus on healing and recovery rather than worrying, “Am I able to work today?” as I had been playing it by ear the past few work days. Hopefully by next Monday, my efforts to pay attention to my mind and body pay off and I can return to being a working, functioning adult.

It’s extremely frustrating and stressful, I’m not going to lie. When any of my friends got their wisdom teeth out, their recovery was seamless, with no complications. My recovery seems to be littered with complications. I’m pretty sure I have a dry socket in one of my incision sites because it’s day 7 and it hurts when anything touches it.

Oh, did I mention I also got some nerve damage due to the surgery? I initially thought it was the anesthesia, but day 2, the numbness was still there on my lower left jaw area. I still can’t feel pain in that area. I can feel when I run my tongue over my teeth in that area, and when I touch that part of my chin with my finger, but I can’t feel pain, and there’s a tingly, numb feeling still present. It’s also very clearly only from that specific wisdom teeth extraction because the feeling of numbness stops exactly in the middle of my bottom lip and I can feel everything on the other side. (Which to me is slightly fascinating because it’s like that nerve really does control that specific quadrant of the jaw and it’s perfectly split with the nerve on the opposite side.)

I’m still having to manage my pain with both ibuprofen and Norco, although sometimes, infrequently, it is manageable with just the ibuprofen – but as soon as I think the pain is getting better because it’s manageable with just the ibuprofen, the pain increases and I’m back to the combination of pain killers.

So, that’s where I’m at now. That’s where I’ve been the past week. And it makes me feel utterly dejected, as if my own body can’t handle a simple, common surgery. I even questioned how my physical body is still alive when I’m having such a struggle just recovering from this procedure. I even questioned whether it’s even a good thing at this point that I’m so aware of my feelings and mental needs.

On one hand, I’m aware that my mental state needs a break because I woke up about ready to cry this morning and identified it was because my recovery has been frustrating, so I know it’s best to take a break before I try to keep pushing myself.

On the other hand, if I weren’t so aware, and I didn’t know why I wanted to cry, maybe I would have just gone on with the day, went into work, and went about my day without thinking about it too much.

But knowing exactly what my body needs daunts me with the task of actually listening to my body. If I don’t, obviously I know it’s not helpful. If I do, great – yay me for taking care of myself. But just the fact that I know what I need to do and have a choice of whether to do it is stressful.

Especially when the choice is to work or rest, it makes me feel as though I can’t just be a normal, functioning adult, which adds to the stress. I can more clearly understand now how depression can be a disability and prevent one from being able to work. Even with being on antidepressants, I feel like I’m at that point. I only worked two days out of the previous 7 days. Of course, if I didn’t undergo a surgery, I probably wouldn’t be this dejected. The simple fact that something as common as a wisdom tooth extraction can get me this way, though, is probably the most depressing idea right now.

I know my depression and anxiety affects me, but can I least still function and be able to go about my daily tasks and responsibilities? Why is it this hard? I want to help out at work, stop taking days off, and be reliable once again. It’s not like I don’t want to work. I like my job, I like my office, and I like my coworkers. It’s just so frustrating that I can’t do those things.

If you actually read through all of that and made it this far, I thank you.