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Day 73 - Just Before The Finish Line...

It's been almost a month since I last posted. The healing seems to be slowing down significantly. I'm still making progress, but slowly. I was trying to take pictures every week at the beginning, but because progress had slowed and life got real busy, there's been a month passed now since the last mug shots...with only slight improvements. I'm close though! I think I've reached the final frontiers of the nerve recovery process, so maybe these last fine details are just going to be the most difficult...or I've just reached a stand-still right before the finish line and it's just not going to get any better.

These pictures only show very slight asymmetry, hardly noticeable, but when I'm making fine automatic expressions with my eyes, the right eye thinks it's following along, but its not. It does regular subconscious blinking with the other eye, and I can manually tell it to close, but other automated things like squinting in the sun don't work either... it just sits open when it thinks its squinting! My mouth still droops slightly on the right. It sill feels tight all over on the right side, with a few sensitive spots, and occasional random pulsing pains on the right side of my head, and my tongue is still slightly numb, but that's about it!
You can compare Day 73 to Day 50 on the full spread of all my mug shots to date (again, way too many images of my wonky face all in one place!). Aaaand, you can definitely see the weight gain with a spread like this of weekly photos over the course of 2.5 months, during which my activity levels have been restricted due to low energy. Even though I eat really healthy. It's discouraging but there's nothing I can do... and it doesn't help when friends here tell me to my face "You got fatter!" The culture here is just very different from American culture in that regard! I guess it's a good antidote to my pride! It's just not offensive or taboo at all for them be so blunt about another's weight, and sometimes it's even considered a compliment!
Energy-wise, I'm still dragging, but I'm keeping up with about 30 hrs of work, doing nothing outside of that but going home and crashing, and I've more or less been able to hold my ground and not work overtime, even though this is our busiest season of the year.

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