Vomit

This essay was published in Malocclusion: A Post-Bimaxillary Osteotomy Nonfiction Journal, which can be found here

In a moment I was awake, stomach-churning and head drooping. Knowing what was coming, I frantically felt around for the phone remote in the half-lit intensive care unit. Then it came: blood. So much blood. Leaking through the gaps in my bound together teeth, filling the cold room with a vaguely metallic stench. I could do nothing but lurch and heave as it fell onto my hospital blanket. There was no chance to reach for the suction tube on my left; I gripped tightly to the rails of the hospital bed every time my jaw convulsed and ejected blood.

Finally, two nurses rushed in to assist me, using the suction tube to suck up the blood and vomit into the half-filled jar behind me. With moist eyes, I laid back, waiting for the morphine and anti-nausea medication to hit the bloodstream. The nurses changed my sheets, my mother came back from the bathroom, and I fell asleep out of exhaustion.

The first time I looked at my face in the mirror after my double jaw surgery, I could only think of how big a mistake I made. My face blew up like a balloon, and underneath my jaw was a sack of meat the size of an orange. Was this the new face I was promised after all these years? After all this pain? Of course not, but I was hopped up on too many drugs and barely enough sleep to make that mental connection.

Eventually, a wheelchair came to pick me up and relocate me to a normal hospital room. After another day of taking pain and nausea meds and drinking soup stock to keep me alive, I was wheeled out of the hospital. I would go on to vomit again a week later, though this time I was left on my own to clear out everything from my mouth. The things I do for my jaw.