Pheealzabraces: 8 days out

So here we are, a week and a day out from the first leg of this long arduous trek. The surgery went well, and I seem to be healing well and on schedule. There was a little bit of a scare on my part about a potential dry socket on Monday and Tuesday, but it appears to be some tenderness and bacteria build up due to the medicated rinse not getting to all the places it needs to, mainly due to my paranoia about swishing too hard and flushing a graft out of one of the sockets. Slightly more vigorous rinsing and local application of the rinse to the extraction areas seems to be doing the trick.

    I have to extend my appreciation to my buddy Clint who took me to the Dentist and got me home safely in my completely zonked out state, the details of which I remember absolutely nothing until we were back at the house. My only memory after falling asleep is one of waking up (I use the term very loosely, it was at most a state of 50% consciousness) and trying to scratch my nose while feeling a tugging on my lower right jaw. After about five or six attempts, each of which was gently deterred, I gave up with a weary sigh (probably only in my head) and fell back under.

    Clint got me settled in and fed me some Cottage Cheese and a chopped up hard boiled egg (he vetoed my request for some Bacon pieces), and once I was on the couch and not bouncing up every 30 seconds, left me to my own dozing, ice pack changing and baseball/Masters watching devices. Once I got my phone unlocked (Clint texted me asking for my phone pass code after he left the office and I told him that I had the fingerprint reader set up on it for both thumbs and index fingers, then promptly turned it off once I got into the operating room – it only unlocks with the passcode on restart – try that coming out of anesthesia) I added semi coherent postings to the mix between long cat naps. I’m sure my cat Bolt was a little unsure as to what exactly was going on. Time was a rather difficult concept for me to comprehend for the rest of the day. I’d close my eyes and open them after five seconds and it would be two hours later, but getting up to get a banana and come back to sit down and eat it seemed to take 45 minutes when in actuality only 10 passed at the most. I’m also pretty sure I stood in front of the freezer touching either side of my tongue with an ice cube because I could still feel absolutely nothing on the right side at 6 PM and was getting paranoid that a nerve had gotten severed. Yay drugs.

A couple other notable milestones directly related to these current events:

I had my last beer 11 days ago.
I had my last drink 8 days ago. (I’m not inclined to interfere with the Steroids and antibiotics that I’m on if they’ll help me heal faster and not get an infection)

The beard is back. I started growing it about a week before the extraction because I figured shaving would be an unpleasant prospect. The pain never got to that level, and it’s come in about as salt and peppery as I expected (although much slower than I remember it growing in the past), but it’s also garnered a couple compliments so I’m going to let it stay for a while.

My pain threshold seems to be unusually high (just been taking 400 mg of Ibuprofen four times a day, haven’t touched the Acetaminophen that was prescribed for pain), likely as a result of the experience of the wreck and my chest surgery when I was 12.

    I was back at work Friday afternoon and several people were pretty amazed that I was up, moving, and not swollen up like Rocky Balboa after his bout with Apollo Creed. My response was a simple shrug.

I go back to see Dr. Brownfield next Friday to see how I’m healing and to hopefully determine whether the next Surgery will be the left side alone or with the prep and to schedule it.

Pheealzabraces: A saga 25 years in the making.

    December, 1991: Our tale begins with a young student of technical theater studying at Temple University who spent his Summer and holiday breaks working first as a clerk/cashier at various Pennsylvania State Stores and later as a Casual Letter Carrier for his local suburban US Post Office.
   
    One morning, having gone out on an early mail collection run and mere blocks from the post office, young Phil decided that the travel mug of tea, which was in the letter tray and had tipped over while he was making a turn in his ancient postal jeep, was a higher priority than watching his path while in the middle of the turn. In the wink of an eye a parking meter was parallel with the ground, the front end of the jeep was wrapped around a telephone pole, and his face was forever changed due to its violent encounter with the steering wheel courtesy of the lack of a shoulder belt in the 1950’s era vehicle. Upon looking up in the rearview mirror and seeing his rearranged visage, including missing (actually merely displaced) teeth, panic ensued and he ran screaming back to the Post Office, where he burst into the sorting floor, shouted to all that could hear what had happened, and ran up stairs to the break/locker room to begin washing the blood off and surveying the damage.

    An ER and oral surgeon visit later, home, stitched and wired up, our hero was visited by several friends and convinced to venture out to see a movie. Not just any movie, but the latest offering from two rising young stars of the early 90s, Msrs, Depp and Rider (Edward Scissorhands). Not the best choice for someone who had just torn up his face and was still a bit loopy from the painkillers, it predictably ended with him balling his eyes out in the car after the viewing.

    Being young and healthy, recovery from the inflicted wounds was fairly quick and painless. the facial wounds healed with minimal scarring. The two teeth were reset, the bone healed, and root canals were subsequently performed on both of them.

    February, 2015: During a regular 6 month cleaning and checkup with my regular dentist, the hygenist noticed that the gums around the two dead teeth were bleeding at the slightest provocation. Some additional X-rays were taken and viewed immediately (computers are pretty amazing these days) and the dentist noted a “shadow” developing between the two teeth. We talked about a couple options, and I chose the Sonicare toothbrush and Waterpik ones. On the subsequent visit in August, things seemed to have settled down.

    February, 2016: The bleeding had returned, along with the shadow becoming more evident. The dentist introduced a new term to my vocabulary, “external resorption”. I was (understandably) concerned and intrigued.The process in question is one of the body secreting enzymes that essentially eat away at the tooth(teeth) from the outside. So the upshot of all this was that my body was done with the two dead teeth and was hastening their demise.

    March, 2016: I was referred to a dental specialist/periodontist, who confirmed the external resorption and broke the (not entirely unexpected) news that the two dead teeth were going to need to be extracted and replaced with an implant. Her biggest concern was that the resorption was occurring at the gum line and thus was affecting the bone as well. The subject of braces was raised. It was not the first time I had been asked about them. She (Lauren Brownfield, let’s introduce her, since she is a key player in current and future proceedings) wanted me to consider the option because of other problems with my teeth (which I always thought were in pretty good shape. Not perfect by any means, but better than some of the rickety grills I’ve seen on other people I’ve crossed paths with). Once the dead teeth were replaced with the implant, braces would be less effective due to the fact that the implant would not move like the other live teeth since it would be anchored into the jaw with a screw.

I went ahead and scheduled a consultation appointment with the Orthodontist she recommended (mainly because they work together on quite a few patients, I’ll get into that in a bit). He (Tom Hall, introduced for the same reason) identified several issues (cross bite, overbite and crowding in the lower front) that he said would only be more of an issue the longer I waited. I went ahead and got some scans done at his office as well as a dental imaging lab that same day. This was in addition to a 360 degree ct scan of my upper and lower jaw at Dr. Brownfield’s office the week before. Two days later at a follow up visit with Dr. Hall, I pretty much acquiesced to the fact that the braces were a necessity and began the discussion of which ones to go with and the financials and timeline/duration of the treatment. He also casually dropped the bomb of it probably being necessary to extract my wisdom teeth, which had all come in straight (a fact which I was probably a little too smugly proud of). When I inquired about why that might be necessary, he explained that they were actually evolutionarily obsolete, having developed through evolution to deal with all the dirt and rocks that were attached to the food we pulled out of the ground and ate immediately tens of thousands of years ago, and designed to be worn down significantly by this time in one’s life (I’m in my mid 40s, most of you know this already, and for those of you that don’t, hi, and which back then was ancient and close to the end of the line anyway) the upshot of which was that because they weren’t they were potentially impeding the fulcrum of my jaw’s motion. It seemed a logical explanation, but the one from Dr. Brownfield was a bit more sound.

    When I went to see her for the follow up that we had scheduled at the end of the first visit she concurred with Dr. Hall about the wisdom teeth, explaining that they would actually be an impediment to the other teeth moving as guided by the braces. We began to speak about the timeline of the extraction of said wisdom teeth as well as other surgery to prep the gums and bone for the braces, which she had initially mentioned during the first visit and which I had found intriguing.

    Essentially what she does (and is kind of a pioneer in, from what I understand) is make a series of incisions in the bone of the mandible (lower jaw) and maxilla (upper jaw) around all the teeth prior to the application of the braces. This stimulates bone reformation and gives the teeth more room to move where the braces are guiding them. Dr. Hall (rather cavalierly, imo) said that she could perform the extractions at the same time she did the prep surgery, but Dr. Brownfield was of a slightly different opinion, mainly because I have unusually deep roots, but also because extracting all four wisdom teeth AND performing the prep surgery would be a long time to have my jaw open all the way and might strain the hinges and muscles.

    So now I find myself a little over a week out from the first extraction surgery, wondering what it’s going to feel like running my tongue back along my jaw and only feeling three molars, wondering how much this is actually gonna hurt, wondering how annoying these Incognito braces are gong to be on the inside if my teeth, and wondering how crazy it’s gonna be to have a totally different smile

(Why) America (is) the Beautiful

Greetings. Long time.

So, I'm home from D and T Icehouse, a great craft beer bar which is a reboot of an age old neighborhood ice house in the Houston Heights, where I watched the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos tonight.

I'm seeing numerous posts on Twitter and other social media outlets about an ad for a certain soft drink that featured several people singing the song "America the Beautiful" in several different languages.

Predictably, the ad has resulted in numerous passionate  responses.

The ad and commentary can be seen here: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/02/coke-super-bowl-commercial-causes-right-0?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I'm not going to try to dissect what the original intent of the ad agency and the soft drink company was in making the choices about the script of the ad. All I can comment on is how I interpreted it:

It was fine.

All the languages that verses to the song were sung in are spoken in the U. S.

There is no official language in the U. S.

If an official language is ever declared in the U. S., it better be two languages, because Spanish has always been a secondary language here, and may soon be on an equal footing with English.

THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP THIS.

The current immigration and economic policies of the U. S. dictate this. People can talk all they want about (predominantly) Spanish speaking (illegal) immigrants "taking" jobs from honest (white) Americans, but they are jobs that no white American would last a week at (just ask Georgia farmers).

This country was founded on the principle of it being a haven for prosecution of many types. Predominantly religious prosecution, but also economic, social, etc. Of course, the founders continued the fine traditions of European prosecution on the Natives of this land, but that's a subject for another post.

The point I want to make here in my post Super Bowl more than slightly buzzed state is that if we as a nation are going to start acting in a Draconian Nationalistic Isolationist manner, we need to redefine ourselves as something other than a country that welcomes with open arms your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Yes, the United States was founded by a predominantly White, Protestant  majority. But the structure of the ruling coalition is bound to change, and the worst (yet unfortunately easiest) reaction to this change is resistance, which only brings about strife and makes the inevitable change more contentious and difficult.

There is nothing wrong with diversity. There is nothing wrong with people speaking different languages. If something needs to happen badly enough, the lines of communication will be established to make it happen. And the sooner it is accepted that the U. S. is a bilingual society (and it is already), the more smoothly and efficiently it will operate as a member of the global community.

I know it's easy for me to write these sentiments living down here in the Gulf coast region of Texas, but I'm pretty sure the conditions are the same in varying degrees throughout the U. S. The sooner we all let go of any preconceptions we hold of the U. S. and (maybe) take a Spanish (or other appropriate) language course, the wider our eyes will open and the smoother our paths will seem.

Random Memory Triggers

The phenomenon of social media is still making its inroads on my life, being a member of the generation that knows just enough to be aware of what’s happening in the early part of this new century, but old enough to not quite be on the up and up in terms of the pace of the development and change of technology and said media.

To wit, Twitter and an application, or APP, known as Untpped, which allows a user to check in whenever they imbibe a malt based alcoholic beverage, for the purposes of networking with persons of similar inclination (fellow drunks) and also various commercial interests (brewers, distributors, advertisers, etc.) was key to a flood of memories recently.

After checking in during a late breakfast following a yard work session I engaged in a discussion of the subject beverage of the check in in question and proceeded to engage in an exercise of metaphor mixed with memory that dug deeper than I expected it to. The beverage in question was an anomaly of a beer which called itself a stout and looked like a stout, but upon consumption drank like a lager and had similar effect. In my discussion on Twitter with a fellow beer aficionado I likened the illusion to hearing the knocking of a diesel engine behind you and turning around expecting to see a large truck and instead seeing a small Volkswagen diesel powered car.

This was drawn from an actual episode in which the event in question occurred. After my family moved from Kansas City, Mo to the Philadelphia area my Father, Brother and I would take an annual road trip back to KCMO to visit his parents and give our Mother a break from the Testosterone fest she had to deal with for the other 50 weeks of the year. It was on one of these trips, during an early morning in a motel parking lot, that I heard that exact sound and turned around actually looking up to see above the tall grille of the Freightliner or Peterbuilt Semi Tractor that I expected to see there (I was enamored with the big truck and was considering a life on the road as a driver at the time) and instead being disappointed by the sight of a diesel powered VW Rabbit idling in the next parking space. My Dad laughed to split a gut, and I had to grin myself.

I hadn’t thought of that moment in several years, and actually had gotten to a point where days could go by without me thinking about my Dad (which I understand is an advanced step in the process of dealing with the death of a loved one) but once I realized where that memory came from and started reflecting on it, I realized how much I still wish he were around.

None of this is bad, just unexpected in terms of the cause of the stimuli. I think that any thing that these new technologies and interactive media formats do to help preserve contact between people is extremely valuable. We are ,and always will be, social animals, no matter how much we try to hide behind our keyboards and terminals. We long for contact and interaction on some level or another.

The struggle contiues (and the stakes get higher)...

Forced transitions

As those of you who follow my Tweets and/or FB updates know, a new acquisition was welcomed into my world yesterday in the form of a new laptop. This followed a rather sudden and (briefly) traumatic morning of loss when my trusty iBook laptop decided to crap the bed after being moved over on my desk a few inches while running. The hard drive started making sad noises, followed closely by the pinwheel icon of death (familiar to MAC users), followed by repeated failed reboot attempts. After a brief period of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I realized that the time had come for the new acquisition. The biggest pain about it was going to be starting from scratch vis a vis web browser bookmarks, calendar entries, and music library contents. I viewed this as a major bummer, to coin a phrase dating back to the eighties, seventies, and even sixties.

Having previously committed time to Janet at KPFT for premium packing and mailing, I headed over to the station, where I could fulfill the commitment as well as get online and make an appointment at the Apple store to confirm the demise of the iBook and secure the replacement.

Halfway to the station (an amazingly straight shot down Studemont/Montrose over the course of a few miles) I was set straight in terms of the state of my world (which I thought had ben severely inconvenienced) by the sight of a fender bender involving an innocent motorist and the cab which had rear ended said traveller. I thought to myself "man, that cabbie's day has just begun to suck", not in a gloating way at all, merely in a way that put my seemingly earth shattering circumstances in perspective.

It helped quite a bit, and also brought to my attention the power that technology has managed to hold over us as a society in a very short time. I had a very palpable pit of the stomach feeling for the few hours between the time I new that the iBook was dead and I had the Macbook in hand and then at home and running. It was similar to the feeling that I have had on the few rare occasions that I have forgotten my mobile phone and been without it for more than an hour (OH MY GOD, WHAT IF SOMEONE (THE OFFICE) CALLS?!?!?!?)

Wasn't I swearing less that 10 years ago that I would never have a cell phone because of its essential function as an electronic leash?

I suppose that I'm still clinging to my fleeting memories of being able to roam away from home unable to be contacted in any way, yet realizing that the world is at a place where one is contacted via these mediums that you can have with you anywhere, and where one is expected to be contactable anywhere. It's actually kind of rude when you stop and think about it, but then again, maybe it is if you can remember a time when it wasn't the norm. I suppose this is the onset of what getting old and watching the world move on feels like (while still (begrudgingly) adapting). It also feels like it has a bit to do with things in my life passing on (Scooter, the compy of 6 yrs) in close succession, but that is probably something for another post, since this one has exceeded my attempt at brevity, which was inspired by Crystal, but has not panned out.

Microbursts from the Overactive Brain

Having received a concerned email concerning the lack of activity here over the past eighteen months or so, I felt compelled to inform anyone who still may be checking in with any semblance of frequency that the majority of snarks and commentary can be found at my Twitter page. Initially created as a single conduit to bounce status updates along the line to Facebook (morphing into the new empirical Goliath with questionable motives (or not so questionable - profit is very transparent and the noblest of causes, right?)) and MySpace (thrashing and woofing a Stegosaurus's demise in the tar pits of online obscurity and obsolescence since its acquisition by the Murdoch information empire), I find myself utilizing it as a forum for random thoughts and information dissemination similar to what was done here in the past, albeit in a much briefer form (this entry, for example, is already 723 letters too long and is a mere breath in comparison to some previous missives).

So, if you're still interested in my thoughts on anything and everything, the Twitter feed can be viewed here.

The occasional post will still be found here, preceded by an announcement of some kind on the feed.

Thanks & Peace,

Phil