Potholes, car crashes and the movies

By last evening I had begun to get a pretty bad case of cabin fever and so Jonathan and I decided to go out to the movies. We picked 'The Time Traveler's Wife' because we both really loved the book and despite the lukewarm reviews we thought it would still be entertaining. The movie was decent, I suppose, but Eric Bana's acting was really terrible. It was good, however, to be able to get out of the house.

There was one thing about going to the movies that made me a bit freaked out and it wasn't that I was nervous about people staring at my swollen face, but rather the car ride over there. I was petrified of us hitting a pothole or a bump in the road that would jar my jaw and cause me to be in pain and so I spent the entire car ride gripping the door handle praying for a smooth ride.

I slept well last night and felt great when I woke up this morning so Jonathan and I decided to go out for a longer walk. About a half mile in I could sense my face beginning to swell, I say sense because I am still numb from my lower lip to my chin so I tend to equate the tingling feeling I sometimes have in that area with swelling. It is bizarre to feel tingling or itching in a part of your body that is numb because scratching or itching it does nothing to relieve the feeling. I also can see when I look in the mirror that my lips are chapped, but because they are numb I do not feel the discomfort that comes with having dry, cracked lips. I read an interesting article a while back about the phenomenon of having itching on parts of the body that were numb or had been amputated. The lead in was a story of a woman who scratched through her skull right down to her brain but the theory behind how the brain works and why this happens was very interesting.

Also on the walk I felt the same sort of nervousness I did in the car last evening. I was scared I would twist an ankle on the sidewalk or a car would veer off the road and hit us and it would shatter my jaw. Luckily neither of those things occurred but I am beginning to wonder how long it will take before I feel comfortable driving/riding in cars and walking along the street (not to mention running) without the constant fear that something is going to injure my jaw.