If there’s one thing in the world that I’ve grown accustomed to over the years, is a sense of urgency when referencing ANYTHING in the medical/dental fields. Moving to Delaware has really been an eye opener to me. The area I live in certainly lives up to the nickname of “LOWER SLOWER Delaware”. After all of the idiots I’ve met in the Medical fields down here while accompanying Karen on her doctors appointments, and even my experiences with the fucking asshole E.R. doctors in the BeeBee Lewes Hospital… my mind is just BLOWN on how horrible things function down here.
Todays Problem: I’ve had issues with my teeth for probably the last 20 years, it’s genetics and other factors that just cause me to look at sugar and get a cavity. About a month ago I bit into something way too hard and chipped one of my molars. And when I say “Way too hard” that could mean anything from a pickle to the crusts on bread.. my teeth are just that freakishly soft. My father and I can easily compare our teeth to Chiclets, where my sister got my mothers genes and they’re cement in comparison. So having the crack really is nothing new, I figured just let it go and if and when the tooth starts to actually hurt I’ll take care of it. For me, and my extremely high pain tolerance that’s just the way things go. Yes, it’s unhealthy to not take care of them right then and there, but regardless of root canals and patch jobs, it’s just going to figure out a way to fall out of my mouth anyway. Case and point would be another molar that no dentist can seem to properly fix for me.
So, of course you could imagine my lack surprise when I woke up one morning (somewhat recently) and had a weird thing floating around my mouth. It was a large section of my recently chipped tooth. There was no blood, no weird ‘ooh…that’s definitely a cavity’ taste, it was just a broken tooth. I don’t know if I grind them when I’m sleeping, or if the dog was on the blanket and I punched myself in the face in my sleep when trying to cover myself and the blanket slipped, I don’t know. Who knows, it’s happened before (the punching thing) but knowing I had relatively soft food the night before made me question why things are just falling off of me.
For the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with it, chewing on the opposite side and really limiting how often I eat foods that require excessive amounts of chewing. A few people have even said to me that I may possibly have a thyroid problem because for as big as I am, I really don’t regularly consume enough calories during the day to maintain the weight I am. This is well before any dental issues surfaced, I just never was tested for anything. So limiting consumption really is nothing “new” for me.
Last night, however, I got a SHOOTING pain straight up the side of my face… one that can only be connected to my horrible history with abscessed teeth. It’s something I’m used to, it’s not a new pain feeling for me, and something I’m commonly able to manage with a combination of aspirin and antibiotics. So, the shocker attached to it was the fact that the molar, which broke off in sections, is now a quarter of a molar and the remaining quarter is loose. Should I just wait for it to fall out? Sure, but at the same time I know there’s still the rest of tooth attached underneath the gums and having to deal with a fully impacted tooth is the absolute pits.
So, as I’ve done a few times over the course of the last few weeks (unsuccessfully mind you), I started calling the dental offices in the area. One, who is supposedly the best of the best “The Dental Group” in Lewes, as usual was incapable of answering the phone when I called over the past few weeks so you can imagine my surprise when someone actually picked up the phone today. Unfortunately it only caused me to have to be re-routed to another facility because after they charge you probably like $600+ for the “Initial / New Patient Visit”, they decide whether or not they’re capable of handling your current needs. I by-passed that shit and got in touch with an Oral Surgeon in Rehoboth, who takes the Care Credit Card and actually answered the phone on the first ring. After talking to the lady and explaining the situation she noted that she can get me in for Monday but there is no earlier availability. When noting that I’m prone to abscesses, and I feel one coming on she told me if the tooth gets worse to call them, but Monday is pretty much the earliest I can come in.
Now, I don’t know if being born and raised in New York has spoiled me, or what, but when someone calls you with an ’emergency’ situation… aren’t you supposed to do something about it? I know damn well if I was up in Glen Cove I could just call up Dr. Hoffman and be in the door either same day or following afternoon, X-Ray done, tooth extracted, I go home and sleep off the sedation. Why? Because that’s how you’re supposed to do shit!
I’m grateful that I do actually have the Monday appointment, and I know I shouldn’t have waited this long – I get it. BUT, when you’re someone who doesn’t feel any dental pain until it’s too late and irreversible, you just need to get things done when they need to be done.
I’m hoping, with fingers toes and eyes crossed, that nothing happens over the course of the next week. I do have a few antibiotics that I’m going to take to keep the potential abscess at bay so things aren’t delayed past Monday and maybe I’ll finally just start feeling normal again. For now, only broth for the next week and that should cover both the need to drink AND keep something in my stomach.
The biggest issue is every time I even swallow my own saliva I feel the tooth shifting around, I highly doubt it’s even going to last the next 6 days. ::UGH::
While that can get a little annoying, it also worked to our benefit this year. All family members were well taken care of for Christmas, Sean and I did spend quite a bit of money on ourselves but it was on things that we both wanted (for a while) and desperately needed. We know the difference between Wants and Needs – unlike anyone under the age of 16 these days. We both were in desperate need of new desks. I had my Mac sitting on a Rubbermaid folding table and being as the 27-inch iMac (2011) weighs about 40 pounds, it was starting to sink down in the middle. To avoid it completely caving in, we went out and got me a new desk. It’s a super nice one, with plenty of storage and it’s even a little bigger than the previous folding table so I actually got the chance to organize things where I can still completely function without any issues at all. Obviously after Sean spent 7 hours putting this thing together (one warped piece was throwing EVERYTHING off) he gladly took a little nap. I decorated the drawers with dollar store shelf liner so that they can list a super long time without getting destroyed. There’s more than enough room for the work phone so my boss can stay on my butt too heh. I had it across the room next to the TV because we didn’t have a long enough Ethernet chord, but that was taken care of with the addition of a ZyXEL wireless switch that now sits behind my monitor. It supposedly boosts the Wifi in the house, but turns the Wifi into an actual plugged in connection as well, so I’ve got the phone plugged into it and if I needed to I could plug a printer in to it. It was actually strong enough of a feed to handle Sean’s XBOX 360 for a few weeks as well, so obviously it works how it’s supposed to.
Sean, after my desk was put together, began increasingly becoming annoyed with his desk. After drilling into him that he spends way too much time at his desk and needs a new one…. we headed back to Staples a little over a week later (this past weekend actually) to pick up a new desk for him. The one he’s been using for years was a typical students desk with the metal legs, the pull-out keyboard and the thin table top. One you’d see in college students dorm, basically. So it was creaking like all holy hell and we wound up replacing that one as well. He found a nice wide desk that he was in love with, but it unfortunately was not going to fit in the room so he went with one that was closer to size (in comparison to mine). He’s in love with it as well. It’s very nice dark wood with a nice sturdy base, some drawers – finito.
Either way, we both were playing with the Tablet for a little while and found out when browsing through the Settings to get all of the stats that it was now possible (with Android – Ice Cream) to have multiple users. This sparked our interest almost instantly, and we both looked at eachother and I was like “I want”, he said “Go get it” (cause he’s fricken awesome) and while I was pulling the car around (cause he was picking up his desk the same day) he paid for both. Turned into an expensive shopping trip on our parts, but we walked out of there with a want, and a need. 
While he was in the Bedroom for a few hours setting up his new desk, I was prepping the house for Christmas. I did more baking in the past few days than I ever thought possible. Everything from cookies, to breads, to brownies – you name it, I probably baked it. I went all out for Christmas this year, because I actually had more room to do it. I know that sounds a little weird but it’s true. A huge living room and a big footprint in reference to the front end of the house, things just kind of happened. The baking was really just phase two, we’d spent quite some time decorating prior to my even pulling the flour out of the cabinet. So the tree was decorated, the bulk of the outdoors was draped in white lights and the rest of the house had random little touches here and there. Thankfully, minus today, there was really no wet weather going on outside so my garland didn’t get all mucky and was nice and clean for Christmas. I was also really happy with the tree in the living room. With the combination of Karen’s ornaments and mine everything kind of came together that worked out really nicely.
I also got him some new Happy Feet, this is a brand that we were in love with long before Snooki put it on MTV. I’ve always had a pair, and so has he and his were worn to the point that his toes were going to start popping through the bottom. Knowing how comfy they are I changed it up a little bit and got him the “All Around” ones, they look like real sneakers and there’s about an inch-thick rubber sole on the bottom of them. They’re better than my usual outdoor slippers so of course I’ll have to pick up a pair for myself in the future but for now this was all about him and that’s what he got. So that was one pair, and instead of getting him the standard color variations I decided to take a look under the “Animals” section and got him the most ridiculous ones I could find – and his favorite animal – the Penguins. Watching him walk around in these is more amusing than the slippers themselves, but they bring a smile to just about everyone’s face so it was more than worth it.
The thing I was surprised about, however, was the ViewSonic 24-inch Monitor that was under the tree. I’ve been using a 17-inch monitor as my “Email Screen” for the past couple of months and it was working out pretty well for me. I kept my email completely on that window and when I was actually in Photoshop or Dreamweaver I would just load project free TV and watch television right on the desk, no complaints at all. So you can imagine my surprise when Sean upgraded me to a much larger screen. This was one of those items that wasn’t on my wants, or my needs – which then turns into a complete and total surprise. And that wraps up Christmas Eve.
The Sleeping Angel Killer provides the chilling focus to Spindler’s 12th bloodcurdling romantic thriller (after Killer Takes All). Kitt Lundgren and Mary Catherine “M.C.” Riggio of the Rockford, Ill., VCB (Violent Crimes Bureau) vow to catch a serial killer who sets the suffocated bodies of 10-year-old girls in their own beds, dressed like angels in frilly white nightgowns, hair spread out on their pillows and pink lip gloss applied postmortem to their mouths. Spindler’s setting of a “meat-and-potatoes” Midwest town provides a fresh background for two believable and very cool investigators. Kitt, a recovering middle-aged alcoholic, tried and failed to catch the murderer five years earlier, during a 2001 killing spree, while her own child was dying of leukemia and her marriage was falling apart under the strain. Now, when eerily similar crimes recur, someone calls Kitt, identifying himself as the original killer and the new perp as just a copycat. M.C., an ambitious, distrustful newbie, is assigned to help Kitt with the investigation. The detectives must overcome their personal problems in order to catch the monsters, a task culminating in a breathless finale.