Yesterday was pretty odd...

Ok, so my update was extremelly brief yesterday, but I had a lot of stuff going on, most of which I've tried to memorise and let you know here. 

I had impressions of my teeth taken by the lovely Sarah, a good talk with Francesco about what the team are going to attempt during the operation that is causing so much attention, my pre-admission medical and a good telephone conversation with Catherine from the Press office about the potential of covering this operation with some media. Busy day!

The reason for taking the impressions and the press room interest and my surgeon pushing for coverage was unvieled. Whilst this operation is carried out with some regularity, it's usually completed in 3 stages. First stage is to remove my fibula alongwith a flap of skin and a blood supply and use it to replace/rahabilitate my missing maxilla, cover the whole in the roof of my mouth. 2nd phase (2 months later?) is to insert dental implants into the now stable bone. 3rd stage to to put dental veneers/teeth into the implants, thus giving me teeth and my mouth back after nearly 10 years! Seems compliated enough yeah?

Well, the proposal is that rather than do this in 3 stages, we're going to go at it ALL in one session from what I understand. This is apparently a world first and the reason there's interest in the op. 

The medical went well. Marcie (please forgive my if I've got your name wrong, I'm shocking at names!), was lovely and my results were great. 120/82 blood pressure, 1.91m high, 96kg, ECG was great once she'd cut some of the hair off my chest as it was intefering with the readings and hopefully the 3 sets of blood will come back cool. "Big and Strong".

How do I feel about it? Pretty good actually. I've decided that writing this blog is part of my therapy. I learned the hard way last time when I had the initial operation that pretending I was feeling fine and smiling off the demons and not talking about things was totally the wrong way to handle it. I think you could say it left me as 'damaged goods' :(. This time I'm going all out and telling the world how I'm feeling (for those of you that have any interest) in the hope that expelling my fears and thoughts will help me understand where I'm at with more honesty. So, the potential for BBC1 to be filming my operation and featuring it on TV is actually something I find a little exciting. What better way to force this old Northern beast to talk, to share, to cry and to laugh with other people rather than bottling things up and dying inside. 

Off for a couple of meetings in the city today. I have to say that I'm missing my colleagues at NTT massively. Not sure I'm that well suited to working on my own if I'm honest. I love people I suppose and self starting just me is a little tougher. Kinda like being managed by me, but knowing all too well what my motives are.... or something...

I know for sure though, that ever more so, my mantra will be: "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today" which is a quote James Dean said at some point. We share a birthday (8th Feb), so kindred in more ways than one.

One Love

Jez x