My New Face

Tuesdays and weekends are generally the hard times. So today I need to post some majorly amazing photos. And by amazing I mean, kind of disgusting.

Some of you may have seen these already, but let me introduce....
My new Face
and the timeline that goes with it:

Wednesday: I start to get fevers and aches. My nose gets very sore, but I just thought it was me getting some massive zits or something.

Thursday: A weird red swollen area starts in my nose. Also, my nose swells and gets fatter than it ever had in it's life.

 Friday: Mom told me to come down to the office to get some special medicine. She failed to mention that the "special medicine" was a butt shot. I hate shots... I acted very mature about getting it, as you can kinda see in the picture below. I ended up getting 2 of them.

Saturday: I would say I woke up to my face feeling like fire, but my constantly inflating face kept me from being able to sleep anyway. This morning I discovered puss-filled blisters had popped up over night. 

I luckily had decided to go to Yellowstone with some high school friends, so they got to enjoy the beauty that my face was becoming, and it kept my mind off of what felt like a volcano erupting underneath my facial skin.

 I kept getting some weird stares at Yellowstone, so this is the outfit I ended up walking around it. Good thing it was cold anyway. Haha I love it!

 That night the blisters just kept getting bigger and bigger and more painful, but it was nice to be able to joke about it with my friends. It actually was a huge blessing to have something so dramatic and painful happen to my body. It just felt like an additional thing to add to this funny time I am in, and instead of discouraging me the whole time, it became funny to me to have this experience.

Sunday: Wow. Then came Sunday. Sumo Sunday. I love these pictures so much:

This is seriously as wide as I could open my eyes. And wow look at those blisters.

Breakfast with a side of medication.

The something wonderful happened! We started soaking my face with saline, which relieved some of the blisters from the puss. I actually took a picture of the gauze afterward, because it was A-MAZING, but I've been told I would lose all my friends if I posted it. It's pretty disgusting.

Look at those eyes!

I really wanted to take the sacrament, and they offered to bring it to my home, but that seemed unnecessary so I just went to my parents ward for the sacrament only, with this scarf around my face. Fun fact: this scarf was a gift from my cousin Emily. If only she had known at that time what a saving piece of cloth it was.

My face before church

Soaking in saline. Oh, it was such a relief. The skin was very  sore and hot. My ears had started to ache by this point too, so these bandages just seemed to help on so many levels.

Monday: I stayed home from school, but I could tell it was starting to get better!

 Tuesday: I went to school, in what I consider one of the greatest tests of my self esteem thus far. Maybe a little dramatic, but I feel like I gained a lot of compassion for those who have permanent scars on their face. It was so interesting to see how I was treated different, and notice the stares and hear the comments about my face.

Wednesday: Look how much better it is getting! Most of the blisters had drained and now my face was mostly scabs.

 Thursday: The puffiness is almost gone and my face looks like me again mostly.

Friday: I wore makeup on my skin for the first time and it is now just very red, dry, bumpy and itchy.

Saturday: Now when people see me they just assume I have some sort of sun burn that has dried out the skin. It flakes a lot, but is much less red.

And today? It looks good! Actually, it still looks like I am trying to cover up some dried up zits, but I was thinking maybe I should have this happen again some time, because people keep saying, "You're face looks great!" even though my skin still isn't back to normal. Nothing like your face taking a little vacation to Hades to gain a little appreciation for what you normally look like.

Can I just add something? On Tuesday, I really didn't want to go to school. And at first I could just kind of laugh off the stares and some of the weird comments, but they built and built. It was a rough day. But on Wednesday when I was walking around on campus, I decided I wasn't going to hide my face, because I realized in a deeper way than I had before that I am not just my face. That even if my face stayed like that forever (which I am so so so grateful it didn't) I was still someone worth knowing and that I could still be friendly to people. I guess I knew that before, but it's harder to actually test. I really am grateful for my giant baby face episode.