My Facial Injury 3 Months On

TW for body image issues.

It's been almost exactly 3 months since I injured my face. For an in depth info about what happened and the immediate aftermath check out this blog so I'm not repeating a lot of the story. When I wrote that it had been a month since the initial injury, and now I'm at just under 3 months. A lot has changed, and a lot hasn't too. When I wrote the first blog I think I was just so happy that I hadn't injured my eye that my brain hadn't processed what had happened properly. Now I've had more time to deal with it and I have to admit, I'm a lot less OK with it than I was.

This photo gives a pretty good representation of what my face looks like now. I have quite a prominent red scar that cuts through my eyebrow, leaving me with a good chunk of eyebrow that no longer grows. That's the easy bit though, because of how it cuts through my eyebrow I've been plucking out the strays hairs that have tried to grow back in underneath the scar because they are really sparse and it just looks a bit odd. My eyebrows were one of my favourite things about myself; I always loved that I didn't over pluck my brows as a teenager so my naturally thick brows survived the early noughties. Not anymore! People often say that eyebrows should be like sisters rather than twins, mine are barely even related at this point.

These are probably the closest before and after photos I can find. It turns out I don't take many photos with me looking directly at the camera. My eyes have physically changed shape, my eye now droops and is still swollen. I don't think it's going to go down at this point. With hindsight it looks like I actually fractured my eye socket in the fall which explains the really bad bruising. I am just about getting to the point where I can comfortably touch my face now, but only just. It's still sore, but not so painful I flinch away. I can't sleep on that side still, but I can lie on it for a little while before it becomes too painful.

One of the side effects I did not anticipate is how hard it is to wear makeup now. My lower eyelashes touch my face at all times so I get constant transfer from them. My upper eyelid is so swollen my eyelashes no longer curl upwards, and even when I curl them they don't have the right angle to them. So if you have any good cruelty free recommendations for mascara that does not shift, please send me them because I'm really struggling! The swelling also means that when I pull certain faces I develop a crease that runs along the length of my eyebrow underneath it.

It's strange not to recognise your face when you catch sight of it in the mirror. I've cried over it, more than I'd like to admit. And I think admitting to myself that I'm not OK with the changes to my face is important, my feelings are valid and I shouldn't push them away. I've spent a lot of time telling myself that I had no right to be so upset because people go through so much worse, and experience a lot more change to their bodies and faces in accidents. I told myself I had no right to write about what happened and how I feel because people have it worse. But my being upset does not minimise anyone else's experience, and I'm allowed to hurt. My face changed, and I didn't want it too, and that hurts.

My face took me a long time to learn to love. I never considered myself pretty, I had way too many teeth as a teenager and had braces for years. I have a round face, a fat face, and it took a long time to consider myself to be attractive. I tend to think of myself as cute, because I know people like my smile, and it makes them smile. I don't think of myself as pretty, and now my face has changed once again and I don't know how to feel about it. And for now, that's OK. Self love is a journey, and this is just a speed bump I've hit along the way.

Much love,

Kitty xxxx

Brides, Get Yours Arms Out! : Lady V London Lyra

What Happened To My Face?

TW For injuries and wounds.

If you follow my social media, you might have noticed a sudden decrease in selfies, and there have been less blogs on here lately too. I had well.... a bit of an accident. It's been a month now, so I figure it's time to explain what happened, and the new addition to my face!

The day of the injury. It didn't look too bad then... it got worse!

The first day of my two weeks off for mine and Stu's first wedding anniversary I had the excellent idea to bath the dog so he was all clean and shiny for our holiday too. After he got out the bath he tried to run through the house to soak the place, no chance! I turfed him out into the garden and went hunting for one of his garden toys to play with while he dried off in the sun. A hunt in the garden came up empty, so I snuck back into the house and left Ashen outside for a minute while I got him a toy. I had my sunglasses on already and decided to leave them on for the few moments I'd be inside the house. BIG MISTAKE. Huge. 

I took one step into the kitchen and I stepped in a wet patch courtesy of the dog and slipped. I hit my face on the kitchen door frame as I fell and next thing I knew Ashen had managed to let himself back into the house and was crying stood over me. He's a clever thing! It hurt SO much. I held my face and tried to get my breathing under control, all the while cursing myself for the inevitable black eye I'd have at the festival we headed to the next day. When I finally moved my hand, I realised that it was worse than that, because they were covered in blood. Crap. I told Ashen I was OK and tried to calm him down because he knew I was in pain, poor sweet boy. I headed to the bathroom to check the damage out, thinking it'd be nothing major, because minor cuts to the head bleed very over dramatically. I looked and well... Ric Flair in the late 80's would have been proud. I was an absolute mess. My hair was full of blood, my face was covered, my arms, my back, my dress, absolutely covered and still pouring down my face. I very obviously needed to see a medical professional and sharpish!

 The day after, ouch!

I rang Stu, my husband, and unfortunately he was an hour away at work. He immediately got on his way back to me but I needed someone to be with me sooner. I couldn't ring my parents because they work hours away, my Auntie and Nanny were going on holiday that day, and I didn't want to worry my other Grandparents. So, to figure out which friends I could ring! As we were all going on a road trip the next day I knew I wasn't the only one not at work. And rather typically, no one was bloody answering! I was starting to panic, when I realised that my friend Becks would answer even though he was at work, and I knew he would help. And he answered on the first ring. Hero! He calmed me down, because I was really beginning to panic at this point, and got on the phone to our friend Stevie who wasn't at work. He came right over to me, convinced that it wasn't that bad. He's an ex-Army medic and took one look at me and admitted that yes, maybe I did need someone to stitch me up.

Day 3 - I couldn't open my eye for the first few hours of being awake.

We rang my Doctor's surgery who had no nurses working that day, so couldn't see me. So he took me to his surgery instead which is technically my local one, who also had no nurses working that day, and couldn't help me. That's your NHS cuts at work folks. I really did not want to spend 8 hours sat in A & E when I just needed a bit of stitching up and other people really did have an emergency. By this point, Stu had managed to get back and took over. I needed a husband hug bad! We decided to try our local minor injuries unit before A & E as a last resort. And I was in and out within 40 minutes, all patched up! They were absolutely incredible, and well worth keeping in mind for minor injuries that need attention, but don't require a hospital. Because of how close the wound was to my eye, and the nature of eyelid skin, I couldn't be stitched. Instead the nurse glued me up and then applied steri strips, with instructions to keep them on for 7-10 days. I've never had glue for a wound before and wow does it sting!

About a week after, I got a lovely yellow bruised face!

I was seriously lucky that my taste in sunglasses is for giant shades, because a smaller pair could have led to damage to my actual eye. I've lost the lower third of my eyebrow and will have a juicy scar, but as I already have a scar on the other side of my face, it's a new one for the collection. This is the second time I've fallen over and needed some sort of stitches in my face, I don't even know how anyone can be that clumsy. The swelling was the worst part for me, it swelled horribly for the first few days, causing my eye to close completely and any shape to my eye lid to vanish. You couldn't see that I even had any eyelashes on my upper eye lid. I have to admit, the swelling had me feeling really insecure so giant sunglasses and a cowboy hat were the order of the day at the festival to make me feel less self conscious.

A month on and my face is still bruised and painful. The outer bruises are gone but the darkness under my eyes hasn't because I'm tired. I roll over in my sleep and wake myself up, and can only sleep in certain position. The swelling to my eyelid hasn't gone down completely and may never, leaving me with a more hooded lid than before. I don't know how my eyebrow will grow back in, or if it will, and given that the scar on the other side of my face is still as red as the day the scabs came off 13 years ago, I suspect this one will also never fade to silver, and stay angry and red.

Once the steri strips came off after 9 days. The glue was MUCH harder to get off.

A scar on your face can take some getting used to. It's not big, but it's certainly something people's eyes are drawn to because of it's location. When I injured my face before I switched my hair parting to the other side to hide it and it was hard for 16 year old me to get to grips with knowing I'd permanently scarred my face. 16 year old me was just leaving school and spent time trying to figure out how to hide it with makeup (I can't, it's a dented section in my face). 16 year old me hid it from photos and was upset when for years afterwards drunk people would ask me what had happened and prod my face in pub toilets. 29 year old me is dealing with it a lot better. 29 year old me can look at it and feel happy that I didn't damage my eye, and that I didn't get a concussion so I was still able to go to the festival and not be ill. 29 year old me can be overjoyed that my friends would drop everything to rush to my side to help me. 29 year old me can laugh at the fact that I'm so clumsy this is take two, and that the first time I fell over my own baggy greebo jeans, and the second time I slipped over on a wet floor from a wet dog. 29 year old me can look at it and smile.

To twist Ru Paul's words badly, if you can't laugh at yourself, how in the hell you gonna laugh at somebody else?

Much love,
Kitty xxxx

Colourpop Lips : Kinderwhore OOTD