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Hello!
Once again it’s been a while. I’m about to be a senior in college (exciting! And also terrifying!). I don’t have much motivation to write anymore, my coping mechanisms flow more towards scrapbooking my feelings away. I’m still not as angsty as I once was, but ARFID has given me some roadblocks lately, but also some good moments too. so I thought I’d share.
Today marks the 1 week of getting my wisdom teeth out! Even after scouring the Internet, I couldn’t find one single person’s experience with ARFID and wisdom teeth removal. Even if I had found someone, it wouldn’t matter because it’s not like every single person with ARFID has the same dietary restrictions that I do, but I was hoping for some comfort and maybe I can give some to you if you have to go through this in the future.
If you don’t know anything about wisdom tooth removal, basically you’re on a liquid diet for a while, and then you’re prohibited from eating crunchy foods for EVEN longer. I had prolonged my removal way longer than I should have because of my fears. I didn’t care about the surgery itself, but was terrified for the recovery process. I was at a point where I was forced to get it done because I was getting infections and swelling and was on some pretty strong pain meds to keep me going until I could get my surgery.
Like I said, liquid/extremely soft diet is a MUST!! Issue is, every food I eat is crunchy. People with regular diets eat things like jello, mashed potatoes, soup, yogurt, etc. well unfortunately for me, I didn’t like any of those things and was struggling to figure out how I’d survive.
Day 1, I only drank water.
Day 2, I also only drank water. Tried drinking milk but it made me nauseous.
Day 3, I had a bowl of icecream despite having 0 appetite. Thought I should at least try.
Day 4, the appetite hit and I had 2 bowls of icecream in one day. Already tired of the icecream.
Day 5, I made brownies (my dad ate like three slices despite this being my only food source this day) I ate two slices and was able to get it down because it was very fudgey and soft. I knew I shouldn’t have tried, but I ate 3 goldfish before bed. Basically shredded them with my front teeth and let it get soggy before swooshing it down with water like a pill LOL.
At this point I’m able to eat cereal if I let it get soggy, it just takes a while. I ate some fries today as well but I got really sore afterwards. It’s starting to look up but I got so frustrated throughout the whole process. I recommend looking up the subreddit for wisdom teeth and just looking up meal plans, because not everyone who has ARFID eats the same thing. I hope you find something there you can eat! It really grinds my gears when people post there “I’m tired of eating soup and icecream, and mashed potatoes and smoothies :(“ ok dude I’ve eaten a single Wendy’s frostie today and tomorrows dinner will be a brownie if my dad decided to leave me one. Cool it with the complaining.
Anyways, I hate when chapters get too complaine-y so I want to end this on a high note!! I met a friend in college (wow it’s been three years. you’d think I should have done that already!! But no!) she has cancer, I think I attract people with chronic illness or something, hopefully she lasts longer than my last bestie with cancer.
that’s A JOKE. I’m allowed to get morbid about my friends dying okay. You’d do the same thing.
Anyways, the big first “hang out” option is almost always going to get lunch, or coffee, or dinner, and for obvious reasons that doesn’t work with me. At one point she asked me if I wanted to do that and I explained to her why I couldn’t, all was well. Didn’t really get brought up again.
WELL, this amazing and sweet girl decided to bring in snacks for our last day of this super small class we had together (a seminar of 5 students). She had seen me eat a chocolate chip cookie at a birthday party for a professor the week before, and made sure to get chocolate chip cookies as the snack! She FaceTimed me out of nowhere while In the store and asked if the cookies she picked out would work, and then went over to the juice box isle and had me pick out a flavor I would like as the drink! I was so blown away because I have never had someone new go through this effort to include me and I felt so good.
People take things like end-of-class celebrations and birthday parties for granted, but I’m almost always excluded and awkwardly have to deny all the food involved with the event, without offending whoever brought it. It was just so nice knowing that I could come to that class that day and feel exactly like every other person in that room, even for only an hour of talking about Toni Morrison and eating cookies and drinking caprisun like 5 year olds. It was just really nice to be apart of.
There are going to be people who will go out of their way to do something this meaningful for you and you have to hold onto them as tight as you can when it happens because it’s a rare and beautiful thing :)