Thanks for the replies.
I did some research today, and started taking Motrin to reduce the swelling of the face. It seems to be helping. I was driving home tonight, and thought "hey, I'm getting some contour back in my cheeks. May just be the lighting though". But when I walked into the garage and past the bathroom, my nightly "look in the mirror and be shocked" moment wasn't so shocking tonight. The swealling has gone down slightly, and the redness is also going down, a bit. I'd say when I had a heck of a bender after my lady left the night her and I split, the next night the redness was a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. It was horrible, and aggravated by viagra I'm sure the night before. It subsided to about a 7 over the next couple of weeks, but I was still drinking. Not as much, but still drinking. This morning I'd put it at about a 5 or 6 still (with one being normal).
I knew something was up when I stopped feeling the facial flush when I took viagra the past couple months. Why I couldn't see the change is beyond me. I noticed, but it just looked like I had just a little bit of sun. Did not notice the facial swelling at all until I looked at a picture taken of me recently. I thought "why do I look so fat?!!! My face usually looks good at this weight." Passed it off as a bad photo. Wow was I wrong once I knew what to look for in the mirror.
So, it's been about 4 days since I had a few beers with friends, and that's all I've had in over a week. Tonight I'd say I'm about 4 to 5 on redness. There is a difference. Spider veins still there, and I know they will always be until I have them surgically treated. It's probably more the motrin than anything today, but if that's what it takes to get me looking relatively normal until I get some more time between me and the drinking, I am very happy to do it. Also picked up some epson salt lotion from CVS, and will be doing cold compresses nightly for a while. I hope this gets me back to looking normal soon. I'm afraid to even be seen by my old boss and now friend, because I know she knows what's up with me. I hope to avoid her for a week or so and be able to pop in and make a visit looking normal again.
If this goes away in a few weeks, it will be off to the dermatologist to see about laser treatments for a couple bad spider veins that are fairly prominent that just showed up in the last couple of weeks.