It’s time for another installment of holiday hi-jinks with your old friend Anne. Who, I must admit, is dragging ass all over the place. If I wrote Christmas songs, this year’s would be titled, “Eff this noise, I need a nap.”

This podcast episode is called Cheekbone Implants of Horror. In it, I read the highlights from that time way back in 2006, when, shortly after the birth of my second child, one of my cheekbone implants decided to start rejecting right the eff out of my head. It was exactly as much fun as it sounds like.

You can listen to it here:

Or download on iTunes HERE.

Below are some visual artifacts from that era, collected here for your enjoyment.

Behold! The silicone cheekbone implants that came out during the first surgery.

Gosh, I wish I’d put something in those photos for scale. Each implant is about the size of a lady’s index finger, if memory serves.

The wrap-around x-ray of my face.

The white dots above my upper teeth are screws, and those bars below my lower teeth are also screws and some sort of connective bars. This is because I had BOTH my jaws broken. Prior to the first surgery, I didn’t even know a person had two jaws. They broke the top one and pulled it out, broke the bottom one and pushed it back. Then they wired that shit up for two months.

FWIW, I don’t set off the metal detection alarm at the airport.

And finally, here are the screws that came out of my head the second go-round.

Fun fact: even after all that bullshit, the doctor only took screws out of ONE side of my face. The whole left side of my head still has all the screws in it. Just waiting. For something interesting to happen to them.

PS: It’s totally difficult to see, but in that single screw shot, you might be able to make out the white of bone that grew right into the screw! Ahh, the screwing and boning jokes write themselves around here.

Hope you are surviving the holidays. XO, Anne