Tongue split Diary Day 0-7 (+ my disgusting healing pics)
(Aka: I was never happier that years of insomnia trained my body to not go insane without sleep)
First of all: Getting this Bodymod was the best decision ever. I longed for one ever since I've seen ot for the first time on TV when I was about 14 Years old. Now, another 14 Years later I finally have one of my own!♡
I also have to add that I couldn't be happier with the Studio/Artist I chose to fulfill my dream. Very professional, super nice and on top of that someone I felt I could trust immediately after the pre-tongue-bifurcation-briefing! It was also super nice that he kept in contact with me every day between split and getting the sutures out. Just an alltogether great experience, which is why I can only recommend the Lines&Dots Studio in Hamburg if someone in or around Germany plans to get this mod done.
But here we go
I will keep it rather short (with exception of Day 0), 'cause let's be honest, nobody is here to read 3 pages of descriptions for each thing that happened each day haha. If there are any questions tho: I'll try to answer in the comments ~
Day 0 - Day of the split
Pain: 0/10 (yeah, I don't believe it either)
I had to be driven 2h to my 10am appointment and was honestly excited and pretty hyped. No anxiousness, no doubt. Thankfully this kept being my emotional state all throughout the process. Besides that, I was even "excited" for the tongue pain, because I had no idea how that would feel like and therefore couldn't be afraid of it haha.
10am:
Time to cut the tongue!
I read a lot about this process and that the sound would be strange, but honestly it wasn't. The cutting itself was taking just 2-5 Minutes max., the stitching that followed took about 30 Minutes and believe it ir not: I was in a state of deep relaxation during it.
Once the wounds were closed I had the lovely task of rinsing my mouth again...keeping the water in or moving any muscle was definitely a challenge, but little did I know: it would only get much worse from here haha.
This is where the drooling started: I couldn't really close my mouth and swallowing the spit wasn't bodily possible anymore. So about 1.5 paper kitchen rolls and just nonstop drooling into a platicbag for 2h I arrived home again. During the drive it was really exciting to feel my tongue(s) "wake up" again and be a bit tingly. I was ready for the pain I read about, to kick in, but it didn’t and (spoiler) it thankfully won't be kicking in any other day.
The rest of the day consisted of me sitting on the couch, mostly not talking, drooling nonstop and desperately trying to drink water, which wouldn't work at all. I tried squeezing the teeniest tiniest bit into the back of my throat, but immediately spit/drooled it out. I believe sometime around 11pm I finally did manage to squeeze maybe 200ml of cold camomile tea down my throat. Took me at least 1 hour to do that and I felt like I just exceeded the worlds most exhausting workout, but hydration was somehow possible from now on.
Day 1 - No Pain, but miserable
Pain: 1-2/10
Sleeping was not in the cards due to having transformed into a nonstop human fountain for thick drool and my tongue swell up a lot more.
As you can see in the pictures it did start to look a bit gross, with all the dark bruises and bloody patches.
Started trying to rinse my mouth with antibacterial mouthwash 3 times a day, which was still an adventure on it's own, since only moving my whole head from side to side ,with a not completely closed mouth, was possible. On top of that I started separating my tongue halves, since I was told to do that from now on. It was easy and didn't hurt at all, since they were stitched up so perfectly and had little to no possibility to just start growing together.
My lymph nodes were also quite swollen.
It was also the second day that I wasn't able to eat anything. I tried to squeeze 2 spoonful of veggie babyfood ,diluted in a lot of water, down my throat buuuut yeah, jo, not in the cards. I did manage to "drink" something like 500ml of camomile tea though.
Day 2 - Violently choking on my own spit
No sleep.
I drifted off into the land of sleep for about 3 times this night and woke up seconds after it, due to my head falling back and making me choke on my, now thin and super runny, spit. Waking up by coughing violently, not being able to swallow or drink was a real fun time and lead to quite bad pain due to all the extra irritation of the tongue from my coughs.
At around 3am I gave up on sleeping and started my first round of dental hygiene routine for the day, where I noticed 2 tiny open looking wounds near the stitches. Since there was no blood coming out when drooling or rinsing it seemed to be nothing bad.
The imprint my teeth left on the sides of my tongue started hurting. The pain was rather annoying than actually hurting. It irritated my tongue quite much, since there was this constant sensation of pressure without being able to close or even open the mouth more to have at least a bit of relief. Every time I did try to open it more my jaw started trembling and made the whole situation worse.
My lymph nodes were still horribly swollen ,but i tried my best to cool them down with icepacks, as well as cooling my tongue with camomile icesticks and popsicles.
The tongue itself looked horrible, still had a lot of bruised and bloody spots and got some yellowish coating that will only get worse. It also felt a bit numb and at some point my left half felt dry, but was obviously covered in spit.
The drooling didn’t stop yet and resulted in my lips being all dry, sensitive and chapped to the point that not even chapstick helped anymore.
Because I still couldn't swallow even the tiniest bit, I also wasn't really able to take meds against the inflammation.I chopped the already tiny pill up into 6 pieces, shoved it down my throat, squeezed tea into it and ended up caughing it all out again. Repeated that a couple of times and gave up. My throat was just too slimey. I was probably never happier that hellweek didn't come with any real pain for me, because I couldnt have taken any meds whatsoever.
On a positive note: first day that I was able to get something else into my body than just tea! In the evening I cooked 2 potatoes, mixed them with babyfood and a lot of vegetable broth, let it cool and consumed it through my lifesaving squeezebootle. Was still only able to "eat" about 400ml, but still: success!
Day 3 - Smells like death itself crawled into my throat
No pain, except excruciating backpain
Day 3 was probably the nastiest out of all of them. I was still drooling nonstop, unable to close my mouth and on top of that it started smelling really bad. No matter how much I rinsed my mouth and tried to brush my teeth, my breath continued to smell like something died in my throat and my spit was turning yellow-ish and thick.
As you can see in the pictures the tongue also looked quite bad and had a lot of yellow coating, which I tried to get rid off with my tongue scraper at noon. It was indeed a bit better than before, but nowhere near clean. I also scraped off a tiny chunk of dead skin? Blood blister? Puss? I don't know, but it did make me panic a bit, when I suddenly held this tiny piece of rubbery flesh between my fingers.
I also tried to get the inflammation down by taking ibuprofen....yep yep yep...tried. Cut it in 8 tiny pieces, nearly dust by now, but they wouldn't stay down my throat.
On a positive note: I did sleep a bit that night. It was just 2-3h, upright in an armchair, leaving me with horrible backpain and it wasnt good continuous sleep at all..but it was some sleep.
Day 4 - Goodbye spitbucket
Thanks to scraping my tongue like my life depended on it the coating went back a bit. My mouth on the other hand was still a toxic waste zone, no matter how much I scraped, brushed and rinsed. 2 Seconds after tasting the minty toothpaste it turned smelly and bitter again.
I did sleep somewhat ok for the first time, after being awake all night but managing to actually lay down, pillow put into a plasticbag with 2 towels on top, and slept for 3 whole hours! Not gonna lie I was terrified at first to just choke on my spit again, but thankfully it worked out, even though the spitstream, leaving my open mouth, was quite disgusting.
Later that day I managed to drink out of a glass again, which felt like a ridiculously big achievement. This feeling of success just trippled when I managed to swallow again later that evening and therefore stopped being a portable spit stream.
/////slight ED warning//////
One thing I wasn't prepared for was what this process did to me mentally. By Day 4 I had lost a lot of waterweight, since I wasn't able to eat. I struggled with different Eating Disorders in the past (this kinda proved I still am) and seeing myself lose 6kg within 5 days in the end + actually noticing a huge difference in the mirror and in my immediately lifted mood , was honestly quite scary.
I just wanted to put that out here, since I believe it is important to say, because I certainly didn't thought about the possibility before and believe it could be helpful to be aware of it.♡
////////////////////////////////////
Day 5 - Finally some sleep!
Pain: 3.5/10
No drool, no choking, just 7h of sleep, that was just interrupted 3 times. It felt like heaven.
Due to waking up with a dry mouth my tongue started hurting a bit. I'd say around 3-4 on the Painscale, which also made the detaching and stretching of the halves a bit uncomfortable.
Swallowing was possible again, solid food still wasn't in the cards, which is why I tried out some vegan meal replacement shake. Again, tasted like heaven and I was incredibly happy that it worked out, since I was getting hungerpains by now.
Day 6 - Welcome to hell
Pain: 10/10
Woke up early to get my sutures taken out and nothing could've prepared me for the pain. A lot of numbing spray was used and I'd really say I am actually great with dealing with pain and it takes a lot for me to feel it/say something, but this literally felt like my tongue was cut in half right then and there without any numbing. Honestly kind of what I expected the actual splitting a few days ago to feel like.
But hey, that was just one short lasting downside of the whole , actually great, experience.
That evening I was able to eat some mashed potato and grew increasingly excited by being able to carefully move my tongues (even in different directions already!) again.