Full Recovery: Thanks to Odwalla

Last Thursday I went in for another biopsy on my lip. Having done this a little over a year ago, I knew just how much pain I was in for during the actual biopsy itself and the recovery period. Thankfully, I had so much emotional support from my friends and family, and B took the afternoon off so he could go with me.

While the lip is one of the fastest healing body parts, it is also one of the most sensitive areas. And having a biopsy on almost smack dab in the middle of my lip makes talking, eating, and drinking anything very difficult on its own. Thankfully I was very well prepared this time around. We stocked up on tons of yogurt drinks (blech) and Odwalla smoothies so that I could get as much nutrients as possible while avoiding eating. I had a shake for breakfast and lunch and filled up on lots of sugar-free iced tea and water in between. I learned that the straw is probably the greatest invention known to man. Okay, maybe this is a slight exaggeration but I was on a liquid diet. By Sunday evening, I started to eat some foods that I could put in on one side of my mouth and that required little to no chewing. So, I ate a delicious dinner of pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes, homemade apple sauce and pumpkin frozen yogurt from BoYo (the last two eaten with a baby spoon - no joke).

But seriously, I could not have gotten through this without Odwalla shakes. My favorite was the Vanilla Al'Mondo Protein shake. It is a soymilk protein drink which boasts of 18 grams of protein per bottle. This was my absolute favorite as it tasted of vanilla, soymilk and banana. I think you have to really like soymilk to enjoy this shake. The label also said that oatmilk and almonds were an ingredient but I didn't taste any of that.

The second shake that I tried was the Pumpkin Protein. Since I adore anything pumpkin, I thought this would be great. This is another soymilk based drink with 18 grams of protein. There was a strong soymilk taste but the pumpkin flavoring was way too sweet. This was a good alternative to the vanilla soymilk shake but disappointing pumpkin flavor-wise.

I also had some fruit-based drinks, including the mango tango. It had a strong mango and orange taste although the label also included apple as an ingredient. It was just alright. I've had many better mango smoothies.

But I did love the Strawberry C, which had strong flavors of orange and strawberry. It was the kind of fruit smoothie I would drink even if I didn't have stitches on my lip. I had one this morning for breakfast and it tasted great.

I kept myself housebound for three and a half days while the swelling and bruising went down. The lip is still sore and the bruises from the local anesthesia are starting to heal. I slept a ridiculous amount. I read two books - an autographed copy of "Bringing Home the Birkin" (which I loved, loved, loved) and Kathy Griffin's "Official Book Club Selection" (which is hysterical). I watched countless movies, including Lifetime's Sorority Wars (ofcourse I loved this), Very Young Girls (a touching documentary on child exploitation in our country), Ghost Town (seriously Ricky Gervais is such a star in the UK, I hope he has the same success here), Revolutionary Road (which makes me never want to leave Beacon Hill, even if I have to run into PER and Chester every day), and Adventureland (which was cute). I played a ridiculous amount of Wii. And I was still bored.

By this morning, I was excited to go to work and head to the gym after work. I needed to get out, regardless of the stitches on my lip. Speaking of the gym, hello liquid diet. Four pounds down this weekend.

I get the stitches out tomorrow and until then, I'm continuing my liquid diet for at least breakfast and lunch so I don't look like a weirdo eating at work. Thanks to everyone for checking in on me. Much love for the support.

xoxo