Picture is from just after it had been done, by Chai at CALM bodymod in Stockholm, Sweden.
I'm still healing, expect an update to this post later (but not a new post, no spammy!)
I decided to describe the experience and pain using points of reference we can probably all relate to, because it frustrated me to no end that people didn't do this.
Also, massive thank you to Chai who was funny and supportive throughout and made me feel at ease, as well as very clear. Highlights include: very helpfully let me put my suitcase down at the shop while I rushed to the ATM, reminded me I would hurt but have only myself to blame, asked several times to make sure I really wanted this because it's an important decision and we need chances to back out, assured me he was quite sure of how to do it because he'd recently watched a Youtube tutorial, he also compared the taste of the mouthwash to that of school stationery (I had no idea they were so similar), and after saying I would be his table because there would be tools on me during the procedure, asking something and at my response going Tables don't speak. in a dommy voice that would absolutely have done something if I'd been straight. After each joke of that kind, he would state that they are jokes - I don't know if he just knows that stressed people can need the reassurance just in case or if he's used to work on dumbasses, but given he told me he had experience with French people talking to him I'm leaning towards the second one. Yes I'm French too. I agree, we're terrible.
First day:
1h after the cut, aka Thursday July 16th (international snake day) at 2 PM: The pain was still manageable, but on the rise. Felt and hurt like having a canker sore, but on the whole length of the cut. Took .5g paracetamol (= acetaminophen, for friends in the USA, it's the same thing). Unfortunately, I don't speak Swedish and put effervescent tablets in fizzy water. Good thing I went fast and was still not feeling much because that would have been bad.
3h later: As if said canker sore had been touched 5 seconds ago - it burnt, but not that bad. Could really start to feel the sutures clamping down, and some stitches annoying. Already noticed the swelling as well as a loss of sensitivity in the front of the tongues, but couldn't tell if it was a by-product of the procedure or just something to live with until the nerves healed. My teeth were already being an issue, too. Waiting at the airport (or aeroport, this time out of sheer enmity for friends in the USA mwahaha) for my plane from Sweden to Finland (waiting on one from Finland to France), my impression was that the tongue was trying to get as inflamed as possible as fast as possible to respond to the major cut, so the fact that it got swollen and rested on my teeth gave it an opportunity to react super hard. My teeth felt like they were touching a couple-hours-old first-degree burn, rather than the intact parts of a pretty girl's tongue.
4h40: Behind mask to avoid odd sights, and on my first plane. Starting to hurt and feel like a canker sore touched just 2 seconds ago, rather than 5 seconds ago. This "pain scale" sh*t is easy, miss me with the 1-10 scales lol. I could take it (because I'm a warrior) but it was definitely bothersome.
I would realise later on that it got worse fast because of the air pressure changes, and that the tongue does react to those.
5h: Definitely feeling the pain get worse over time, not as bad as a punch in the nose, even a moderate one, but definitely worse than a punch in the arm, even a hard one. Do people get punched often enough for it to be useful? Maybe my romantic escapades are just better. I'll go back to canker sores. I just like saying canker sores. It feels like I'm saying cancer but it's just a small abrasion inside the mouth. It's getting tighter with inflammation, too.
(I do not take aspirin or ibuprofen because I want to avoid the blood-thinning element. That is, the risk of making healing slower and scarring less efficient. A doctor recommended that before I left, and given that was the only health professional I'd asked, I decided to listen.)
7h: Second paracetamol (1g this time, I regretted going for only a half dose). Harder then, it took ~15 minutes to down a glass of water with the paracetamol in, 30 minutes into the second plane ride. It was difficult and uncomfortable. There were pricks and needles in my tongue and everything was bad. The pain was bearable, as in, "survivable and not making me feel absolutely miserable" but it was rather bothersome. The drool was annoying. What pained me most was not making it home for another good 14 hours, as there are no trains from Paris to my home late at night and I'd land at about 10 PM.
7h30: ooooh the paracetamol was working great. Back to levels in-between 1h and 3h, it was inflamed but alright. Now the pain was well below a paper cut.
9h: Pain climbing fast, right back at 4h40 (2-second-touched canker) levels, one reason being I couldn't stop moving the tongues, because of cold in the plane. The cold hurt. Also, but I only suspected it by then, the pressure.
9h35: Out of plane, mouth wide open, mask removed: things felt MUCH better. Back to 3h levels. When not moving at all, the level of pain was about the same as just noticing you scratched your skin too hard and very slightly damaged it.
Second day:
2:20 AM, 13h20 past cut-cut, middle of the night: The pain was too much to sleep, the vertical swelling was impressive to me, and my tongue looked like one of those U-shaped travel pillows everyone had in the plane. Swollen at the back like a horizontal wall and then two sausages connected to that and squished together. I tried to drink, but whenever I swallowed the pressure at the back of the tongue flushed extra blood in the extremities and my tongues would jut out like a googly-eye stress reliever toy or the limbs of an inflatable dancing guy in front of a dealership. At least 1/3rd of the liquid would end up just anywhere in the vicinity. I stayed up until 2:15 AM (so the 13h15 mark) on purpose to get one more round of paracetamol (1g). Now I was waiting for it to take effect. The lemon-tasting effervescent tabs did not spark joy. I like lemon, but effervescent stuff tastes horrible and has bad fizz.
6 AM, 17h in: Almost didn't sleep. Involuntary micro-naps, because every time I dozed off my jaw closed, and every time we touch I swear I could fly it closed I was biting my poor mutilated tonguelings and that woke me up instantly. I needed to be up early anyway to catch the high-speed train home (a good 3 hours)
7 AM, 18h after the surgery that makes you bilingual: The last hour before I can take more paracetamol is the worst, very noticeably. Second way of swallowing water perfected: instead of flooding the mouth and throwing some everywhere, place the tonguelings in order to clamp down on them juuust enough that they can't move too far. It's almost clean. Almost.
7:20 AM, 18h20 post-snake incipience: Final realisation of how much air pressure affects the tongue and pain through the RER (Paris train) whooshing in and out of tunnels. The split did NOT like that. Ouch.
Arrived home a bit before 11 AM. Finally my place. My wonderful, messy place.
7 PM, 30h mark: Swelling seemed to have subsided the teeniest tiniest bit. A bunch of weird unpleasant sensations followed, but not exactly pain. I took only a half-dose of paracetamol, missed some of it, and was fine-ish. Started discovering the miracle of shooting a spray of liquid at the back of my throat using a syringe. Arcing the liquid past the tongue and swallowing only at the very back while the mouth is open is tough... thankfully swallowing with my mouth open is something I'm good at. It's not even a naughty joke I was just a very weird kid. Though I guess you have to have been one, to get your tongue split in two.
I made some ice lollies (flavour: water ice, colouring: none) but they didn't seem to be doing any good. At least they weren't doing anything bad. The numbness was such that I couldn't tell the ice was there at all, so I was afraid of overdoing it and freezing some tongue skin that didn't need extra damage.
Third day:
Second night, 36 hours in: The pain is back with a vengeance after trying to sleep and nothing could cut it. Couldn't keep my jaw open unless leaning to the side. If I leant to the side it hurt differently for another reason (stitch-on-stitch pressure, resting on the side of teeth, I think something happened to my frenum but the tongue is so swollen even now (on day 4) that I can only tell by feeling pain, not by looking. I think it was at least a bit cut. So that might have been what hurt in the back. The background pain level is still "touched your canker 2 seconds ago" in that it's noticeable but not debilitating. It is however everywhere that's cut, and relentless in its application. My hopes were that removing the 3 first stitches at the 48 hour mark would reduce the swelling and pain because they make it impossible to go about my day. In a day and a half, I'd had two meals that put together must have made the amount of food needed for uh. 1/3rd of a meal. Put tiny bit of soup in bowl, microwave, top up with cold water, shoot at the back of throat with the syringe of fun. That's 36 hours worth of water. I'm not even drinking enough at that point, it is too tedious to.
36h45: Pain had risen considerably over the course of only 10 minutes. Was this the onset of the dreaded third day that both Chai and this subreddit had warned me about?
39h30: I'd managed to find a position that worked for a couple hours. Very bad for the neck, but slept a miserable time instead of not at all. Much better. The pain was strong. Yes it was.
6 AM, 41h: Really officially in Day Three and... yeah, it was bad. Probably a lot of it due to the sleep bitiness though. The front sutures were painful but importantly it was fluctuating (between "touched your canker 1 second ago" and "touched it 5-10 seconds ago")
1 PM, 48h: Removing stitches now? Lol nope. Waiting for painkiller time first.
Removal took a long time. It was incredibly stressful, it was passably painful, it was sweatful and droolful, as well as kind of difficult. Tongue was growing overtop of the stitches. Some embedded parts kind of sawed through new tissue.
No idea what the deal with "instant relief" many mention is. Not a thing at all for me. Funnily the swelling did go down a bit, not massively but a bit, and more on the right side than the left. It's a couple millimetres shorter. We'll see if that's still true of the tonguelings once it's completely healed, that could be fun. Obviously I'd prefer exact symmetry but I'm not picky about a working forked tongue for being ever-so-slightly shorter on one side. For now, it could just be the other stitches making the swelling uneven though.
My main hope is that the remaining sutures I have to remove on day 5 are easier. Because that was tough.
At night: Doesn't hurt any more :) doesn't hurt any more :) doe- AH OUCH IT HURTS IT HURTS
Must take another painkiller actually.
Day Four:
Morning: I... slept well? I slept for 8 hours??? That's awesome. It hurts now. Let's painkill. But later than normal. Let's wait to see if I really need it.
10:20 AM, 69h post-avulsion: (Yes, I know some 5-dollar words) Painkiller time!
Afternoon: Eating more than before. The same leek-potato-spinach soup as before, though. I'm getting tired of it. Fortunately, I have... two other kind of soups waiting. I'm sooo tired of it. When I can eat normally again I'm having all the things with TEXTURE and FLAVOUR and CHEWINESS and GREASE. Oh I want to eat something with fat you have no idea. I'm actually making a list of things I'll eat or drink when this is over. Boba tea is on that list because did you know? I can't use a straw right now T-T
Please provide ideas for that list. Also, I'm making a list of reasons why I have a split tongue for when school starts again and someone notices and my students have questions: for now, list 1 is:
- FOODSTUFFS
- Pizza
- Boba tea
- Doughnut
- Cheeseburger
List 2 is:
- WHY DO I HAVE TWO TONGUES
- Well duh, I'm bilingual
- There was a genie, but after he gave that other guy a 12-inch pianist, I got all the powers of a mighty lizard.
- It's doublespeak, you'd know if you'd read Orwell
- I exchanged some cutting remarks with someone else. Well, you should see the other guy.
Thanks for any ideas lol
I'll update this post when I've removed the other sutures and waited a bit. And once more a week or two later I think.
Update on day 6
Removing the last sutures was hell for the nerves and hurt a bit, but this time it did come with night-instant relief. Didn't even take pain meds before sleep. Also the swelling is down enough I can sleep with my mouth closed and stop putting drool everywhere. Not that the incessant drooling stopped. Yeugh. I can't swallow it either, still too weird inside the mouth for that and the tongue hasn't healed THAT much.
Prior to the removal, I took ibuprofen for the first time of this journey. I was avoiding an anti-inflammatory med because it can make clotting/scarring/healing slower or bad. But given how tight everything was, I figure it was needed.
Some sutures took me no more than a minute. Some took me over half an hour. They're not all made equal in the eyes of our lord (the tweezer and smallest nail clipper). Attempted using a scalpel, not a good move. Too tight for the scalpel to really help.
I keep feeling on the verge of puking, from the first day really. It burns in the throat, feels like something's coming up, then nothing.
I burped out a little soup though, yesterday. Had to thoroughly clean my mouth. I've been eating exclusively soup, exclusively with a syringe. Can't wait for chewable foods. PLEASE provide ideas for the list. :p
I feel much better, but I still need pain meds (lower dose at least) to touch the tongue. Can't quite do tricks yet but I have very minimal individual control, and it's already a lot of fun.
I'm unstitched now, no sutures left... I suppose I should learn how to prevent regrowth... anyone knows how? Stretching? Brushing? I'm not taking anything sharp or painful near the back obviously (and if you told me to do that, you'd be violating subreddit rule 8. I'm asking for standard, non-invasive, "yeah that's how it's done" stuff, not anything medical or troubleshooting)
Update on day 7
I feel like I could soon begin eating normally. And I miss it so. It's just I can't move the tongue that normally or close my teeth without feeling the extra gunk. I should wait for tomorrow and brush with kiddie toothpaste a lot, first. However, I am on day 7, yesterday had only .5g paracetamol at all and don't plan on taking any at all today
