Sometimes No Answer is No Answer at All (or Watch and Wait THIS)

Well, the dentist appointments.  I know, you've been waiting.

In a nutshell?  My appointment yielded no answers.  No bad news, but really no news at all.  They say there's nothing wrong with the punky bicuspid on the right.  They say the x-rays show nothing wrong with the (never-was-necessary) root canal on the left.  And yet both are clearly having issues.  Or, actually, the root canal (that never was necessary) is fine--it's the jaw above it, and it's the same now as it was in November.  No better, no worse.  And they can't explain what its problem is, but I'm assuming their "watch and wait" approach is actually more an "oops, her insurance only covers one root canal/retreatment per tooth, per year" sort of thing.

Do I sound jaded?

On the down side, that pocket I've complained about?  You know, the one I never had until they put the crown on that cracked molar last July?  The one I went back in for TWICE, and again mentioned in November?

It's a six.  You know, the depth?  Ones and twos are happy?  It's a six.  I floss, I brush, I rinse, yet there it is.  They tried to tell me (get this) that the pocket long predates the crown, that it's clearly visible on prior x-rays.

Really?  Because you folks sang the praises of my beautiful gums, even as recently as June.  "All ones and twos," you told me.  But now it's a "long standing" thing that's due to my hygiene rather than your dentistry?

Okay.

I did, just recently, snap up a Water Pik Ultra Waterflosser, and I'm hoping to see improvement. It's got a gaggle of attachments, is easy (though a bit wet) to use, and it certainly does seem to clean that space out.  I grabbed it because of my dad's long history with the product.  Yes, he's about to get dentures, which doesn't sound like a glowing recommendation, but know this--he's almost EIGHTY, and he was a smoker for over 65 years.  Smoking is hell on your gums and teeth, but he's been using a Water Pik since I was a small child, and the result has been him hanging onto those teeth until nearly his 9th decade.

That's a heck of an endorsement, I think.

Speaking of my dad, he's still hospitalized.  Yes, that's going on four months.  He's got an aneurysm with which they've adopted a "watch and wait" approach.  His "ICU Psychosis" seems to be improving, though I still haven't spoken to him.  He said he didn't want to talk to me until he had his mental act better pulled together.  So I talk to his wife pretty frequently, keep track.  He's made great improvements, they closed up the tracheostomy hole, and he's moving about pretty well, though sometimes with a walker.  My step-mom seems to think he'll be home by the end of this month, but I've learned to be wary of her optimism.  She thought he'd be home for New Year's, too.  I'm not dissing her--I think it's great that she's feeling so positive, and I want to encourage that.  But I'm going to sit back and see.

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Back to the dentist and "watch and wait" (seems to be a running theme), my son's appointment went well.  No cavities, which wasn't even vaguely a concern.  No, that's not ego or pride, that's this:  he has two unidentified masses in his right mandible, one of which had grown last year, the other which had APPEARED out of nowhere.  See, we've been "watching and waiting" on his jaw for going on three years now.  With that in the offing, who gives two spits about cavities?  At this point, the masses have not grown or changed in the past year.  No new ones cropping up, either.

So I can breathe.  For a few months.  Maybe six.  And then the panic will start again, slowly inclining in pitch until next March's x-rays.

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We've had great snow this year--much better than the previous two winters.  It's been great, having snow days and beautiful scenes.  No "cardinals in the snow" postcard shots, but a fun video of Charlie, our Cairn, getting a bit hung up.

No need to worry--his subsequent forays were better, once we stomped out a trail for him.  And now?  He rings the bell frantically to be let out just so he can snuffle through the snow.

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And that's about it.  I did notice today while on Amazon that they have a "free 30 day Amazon Prime" thing going on.   We've been Amazon Prime customers for a few years, because it really does save us a lot in shipping AND gets our Prime-eligible orders to us faster.  Plus, it's a  lot like Netflix and Hulu in that there are tons of freebie shows and the like.  If you've never tried it (or if you've got a lot of stuff to order and want to take advantage of the free shipping), go give it a try!  

Oh, here's the Amazon Prime link, which might be helpful.  And no, I don't get paid for your purchasing a membership.  No bounty for your annual subscription.  I do, however, get a little something if you just do the free 30 day.  Personally, I think you'll like it enough to subscribe, but I don't make money if you do.

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An update here:  the landlord is booting us, has given us 60 days notice to vacate.  This isn't an eviction--he says we're the best tenants he's ever had, has offered a glowing reference.  But he's selling, and he needs us out so he can do that.  Which leaves us utterly screwed and possibly facing homelessness.  Truly.  So please.

Chronicling the Dead Keeps my Mind off the Living

I've been doing all things grave-y lately.  A lot of family history stuff, including scanning old family photos and letters.  I've probably said this before, but I'm going to say it again:

Mark your photographs!

Seriously!  We have stacks of unmarked photos that we'll NEVER really know who they were. We've had a little luck comparing them with records on the LDS Family Search site, but most of them are of folks whose identities are lost.  DON'T do that!

Here are a couple examples:

Zero clue, probably taken in Camden or Philly, 1930s, maybe?

Zero clue--we all agree the lady down front right looks like she could be related.

And my husband's side of the family is no better.  Most of them are more easily traced than mine, but they, too, have a crappy habit of not marking photos:

Mormon Missionaries, one of whom is a relative 

So we know where it was taken, but not who it is.

And then there's this amazing gem:

An actual tintype.  It's not in good shape, I had to "fix" her cheek in Photoshop because a chunk is missing.

So I'm saying it again--MARK YOUR PHOTOS SO YOU DON'T LEAVE FOLKS SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS AND WISHING THEY COULD PUT NAME TO FACE!

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In addition to the family history thing, we've been visiting local cemeteries.  Some of the stones, especially the hand carved ones, are really wrenching.  All backward letters and misspelled words and heart.  So much heart.

Plus, I've been cataloguing some English and Welsh cemeteries as I come across the headstones online.  I started in Herefordshire, hoping to come across something related to my husband's family, but got caught up in the history of it.  I now know that the Caroline Spooner was the largest Barque ever built at Aberystwyth.  That's "A-bur-uh-stew-uth."

If only someone would pay me to archive stuff like this.  Because I'm good at it, I love doing it (I do it for FUN), and it's important.  Except most folks don't think it is important.

Sadly.

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Speaking of cemeteries, headstones, and the like, I've been noticing how, even in death, women are marginalized, they're minimized, they're lost to history because, so often, their "maiden" names are not included on the headstone.  So Margaret Griffiths gets married, becomes Margaret Davies, but her headstone only reads "Margaret Davies," or worse "Margaret, wife of Hugh Davies."  

Like she's just an aside, an afterthought.  As though she never was anything but an extension of the man she married.  Descendants run up against brick walls when trying to trace the women in their family's history.  Maybe, if they're lucky, they'll find a church record or census that relays the woman's birth name, but, often as not, that doesn't happen. 

That's got me thinking just how incredibly sexist the whole idea of "maiden name" versus "married name" really is.  Like a woman belongs to her father until some man takes her, renames her, and turns her from "maiden" to "matron." The historic meaning of "maiden" makes this glaringly obvious.  

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A big "I wouldn't piss on your face if your teeth were on fire" shout out to those teabaggers on Capital Hill who have, once again, decided to slash my husband's transit benefit.  That's another 50+ bucks a month gone, though they've INCREASED the parking benefit (which we don't receive).  In other words, they're doing what they can to reduce ridership on mass transit so they can then claim that mass transit, which isn't supposed to "turn a profit" anyway, isn't turning a profit.  So they can slash mass transit funding.  So their buddies in the oil industry make more money off the increased number of cars on the road in an already devastatingly traffic congested area.

And they think we don't know what they're up to.  These are the same guys who squeal about some dead birds at wind farms, while protesting the fines levied against British Petroleum for oil spills that killed millions of birds and fish.

Luckily, they're going to give my husband his first raise in four years.

NOT!

Mmm hmm.  You can torch your damned teeth any ol' time, guys.

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Still wandering around with a temporary crown in my face.  Which has the other side, where I have no molars, raw and sad because that's where I've been chewing.  Scared to death that, despite all the assurances that we have enough credit with the dentist's office to more than cover this, I'm going to go in on the ninth and be told I owe.

We have no money.  Seriously, none.  Which is why I was so careful to confirm, repeatedly, that this would carry no out-of-pocket cost to us.  But I'm scared.  Scared I'm going to utterly explode on them if they try to hold my permanent crown hostage in return for payment they said wouldn't be due.

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I'm going to close with a picture of a tree.  Because we live in a place with great trees.  Trees that dwarf and put to shame those sad, scraggly things in Utah.

Filibuster THIS, Babe!

So.  Dentistry.  Amazing, we allow people to do that to us.  Am I the only person who stares at the ceiling in the dentist's chair and thinks "what the hell am I doing, it is insane, it is absolutely against human nature to sit here calmly and allow this!"

I went in for a "consultation" this past Monday.  Even though they couldn't see anything untoward on the x-rays, and the tooth had stopped hurting a week earlier (but still felt "odd"), the "make it hurt with chemical cold" test showed the tooth wasn't responding the way it should.  The doctor's claim that the nerve was "dead or dying," however, proved to be a bit misleading.  If a "dead or dying" nerve can cause that much damnable agony through a half-gallon of novocaine, then I cringe to think what a "live and kicking" nerve could do.

The dentist (a very handsome guy who looks and sounds like Gaeta from BSG) really wanted to do a root canal.

Not really my dentist, but pretty danged close!

He kept saying he didn't want to push, but fact was, he pushed.  I had them running back and forth to the front desk, ensuring that this wasn't going to cost me a dime (that available credit needed to cover it entirely).  And that was the consensus--my available credit more than covers it.  

So I agreed.  Mostly because I want to use that credit before they decide I don't actually HAVE it.

He said he could do it right then.  Which was a little shocking, considering it took three months just to get an initial appointment in this place.

Things turned difficult pretty quickly.  Like is often the case, my roots were curved.  He said "maybe we should send you to an endodontist," and I said "No money for that."  So we forged forward.

This wasn't my first root canal (I had one about 7 years ago), but it was my most painful.  One canal "blind," partially calcified and the nerve hard to get to.  Office didn't have the right sized file (he needed white, and they didn't have it, though they ordered one asap)..  Long story short?

Four-and-a-half hours of drilling and x-rays and mouth wide open.  And pain.

Holy shit, pain.  Absolutely, by far, the worst dental pain I've ever suffered, and I've suffered a lot.

Four-and-a-half hours, and he couldn't finish.  Other patients being shuffled off onto other dentists so he could put that much time into it.  I wound up going home with a cobbled together temporary filling and two scripts--one for antibiotics (which are thrashing my belly) and one for Vicodin, which is of zero use. Not sure why folks get hooked on it, unless they're taking superbly high doses.  Made an appointment for yesterday to (hopefully) finish, and spent three days eating soft, mushy things because I don't have any molars on the other side to chew with.

Back yesterday, finished up.  Another three-and-a-half hours.  Same dentist because I requested it--I'm sick of the "fast food/assembly line" dentistry where I get a different doctor every time.  I like this guy, even if he did burn my lip twice.  He listens, he pays attention, he actually reads my file, and he put a hell of a lot of effort into this--more than most dentists there would have.  He's new in the office, and, honestly, I think he's a poor fit--the other dentists come across as employees (which they are--this is a "one main, older dentist running a stable of fresh-out-of-school dentists" situation), whereas this guy comes across as a dentist.  He'll have his own office sooner rather than later, I'm thinking.

That his name is a Doctor Who reference?

Icing.

So now I have a temp crown for two weeks, during which time I'm not supposed to eat on that side of my head.  Gonna make Thanksgiving interesting.  On the "bright" side, it does make me eat a LOT slower.  Ever gummed a Builder's Bar?  Takes a while.

Hopefully, this root canal will take.  If it doesn't, I'm going to feel super-stupid having blown that credit on a root canal instead of an extraction and bridge.

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Our latest foray into cemetery photographing took us to an old Civil War era graveyard.  Came across something I'd like to discuss.  A "road to hell" thing.

Don't do that.  If you're not an expert on repairing old headstones, don't whip out the damned GORILLA GLUE and do THIS.  Whoever did this made no effort to mask the lower half of the stone or even to remove the excess before it set/bonded.  There's no getting it off now without chipping away at the stone.  I'm sure the person who did this thought they were doing a good thing, but fact is, they were screwing up.  The road to vandalism is paved with good intentions?  In this case, definitely.

Photographing these cemeteries has put me out on various family history and gravestone sites, which has, in turn, reawakened my interest in our own family's history.  I've discovered a lot about my own family, including stuff I had no idea about.  Like my Great-Grandfather Philip dying in the state penitentiary of TB, which explains why Great-Grandma remarried.  And what Philip did to wind up in prison?

Explains pretty much everything about Grandma Mary's psychological makeup.

Great-Grandfather Philip

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My little sister hit basic training camp two weeks ago.  I got my first letter from her a couple of days ago.  She wrote so small I had to put on my old lady reading glasses to make sense of  it.  She is MARKEDLY younger than I am.  In fact, I am literally (and I mean "literally" LITERALLY) old enough to be her mother.  Her writing will get bigger as her inability to read that small print comes on with age, I'm sure.   Anyway, she's in basic training, Army.  I'm not at all happy about it, would almost certainly have tried to talk her out of it, had I any advance warning, but she sprung it on me after the fact--she'd already enlisted.

Enlisted.  A Specialist.  I'm hoping she shoots for Officer Training.  With a six-year enlistment, she should make the most of it.  I also hope she stays safe.  As a woman in the military, she has more to worry about from her male counterparts than from any enemy combatants.  Our military members rape and abuse female soldiers with impunity.

I'm only just getting to know her, and I like what I'm finding.  She's smart, practical, pragmatic, and funny.  She (along with her siblings) comes from our dad's second marriage. Her mom was "the other woman" (or ONE of the "other women," actually) in my mom's marriage.  She loves her mom, and so I don't ever say anything, but recently her sister (my other little sister) went nutty on our dad's newest wife--the one he left their mom for, calling her a slut, a whore, a homewrecker, etc.  It was all I could do to keep from saying, "Yeah, sucks, doesn't it, when some other woman gets involved with your mom's husband and destroys the marriage?"  

Glass houses, but fact is, it's not my little sister who lives in that glass house.  I'm not going to smack her for not recognizing that her own mother did to my family exactly what the new wife did to hers.  She's not likely to see the parallels at this point in her life.  Maybe in 20 years.

I have no hard feelings . . . mostly.  I do have to compartmentalize, though--bitter past experience has left me no love for women who knowingly dally with married men.  I don't tend to use terms like "whore/slut/tramp/slag," but when I do, I am, without fail, referring to women who have sex with other women's husbands, knowing they're married.

Anyway, my beautiful little sister.  I hope this works for her, I hope she gets out of it what she's looking for.  I hope she's safe, happy, and comes out of it the person she wants to be.

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Not much to say, politically, except this:

Came across a particularly silly Utah name today.  It would be silly regardless of gender, but this was a man's name, and that made it all the more ridiculous.  The name?

Deronda. 

I know, right?

If it Weren't for Bad Luck . . .

Trying to be positive.  Trying to be upbeat.  Trying to view this as "good news" rather than another damnable disaster in an endless series of them.

How about the "good news" first?

I was poring over the bills from my dental crown appointment last July.  After some head-scratching and math-doing, I came to the conclusion that our dentist overcharged us by $518.50. The math goes something like this:

Practical upshot?  Our dentist owed us $518.50.

Hubby didn't want to go along with it.  He figured that the "contracted fee for procedure" only meant that the dentist couldn't charge US any more than that, but that supplemental insurance could be nailed for as much as they could get.  

I disagreed.

So, after spending the morning on the phone with both insurance companies, neither of which was a lick of help, I insisted we head to the dentist's office.

I walked in calm and friendly, stating I had an issue with charges from my last visit.  Hubby and I were quickly brought to the billing office, where a lovely Russian woman, their head of billing, took a look at my paperwork.  She pulled up the account and immediately said "We owe you money, you have a credit here."  But then, as she dug deeper and deeper, her tone changed.  She kept saying things like "Oh, my," and "Oh, no."  And then she said, "I'm going to have to call to confirm your insurance, but it appears we owe you a lot of money."

$579.00, to be exact.

After hassling much longer than was pleasant with our insurer (who, on the first two calls, denied I have any dental plan at all), it was all hammered out.  With our lovely Russian billing manager asking if we wanted a check or credit.

Of course, I wanted a check.  This would pay off a credit card.  This would pay for our boy's promised keyboard AND the mandolin.  Only one problem.

There's something wrong with my upper left first bicuspid.  Something really wrong.

The pain started just a few days before this windfall.  It was an unfocused, all over face pain (as dental pain often is), with the pain searing through the maxilla, the TMJ, and often down into the mandible and through the ear.  It wasn't a constant pain, but rather a sometimes thing that seemed to be triggered by cold, whether it be food or outside temperatures.  I've suffered a like pain before, and had an ENT chalk it up to stress and throw muscle relaxants at me.  I've been pretty solidly stressed, so I decided to sit on it.

And then I found the source of the pain.

I stuck a finger in my mouth and ran it along the upper gum.  When I got to the spot right under the cheek bone and right above that bicuspid and pushed, there was a sharp, searing pain down through the tooth and up through the cheek.  To confirm (because I just had a crown done two teeth farther along), I tapped each tooth with my fingernail.  No problem with the two molars and second bicuspid, but when I tapped that first bicuspid, I was once again treated to wowser pain.

Understand, this bicuspid has a history.  Back in 2004 (a few dentists and 2,000+ miles away), I broke it almost perfectly in half.  I had been eating a treat and came down hard on a large chunk of walnut shell.  The tooth snapped.  It was my first time (and, hopefully only) seeing the inside of a tooth.  All pulpy and stringy and dentin-y.  This happened the night before my family was hopping a plane for SoCal and Disneyland.  Our flight was scheduled to leave at 7:30 am.  The tickets were bottom-of-the-barrel, no rescheduling, no refund-types.  And so I climbed on that plane with a broken-in-half bicuspid and off we went for the very worst vacation of my life.

And that wasn't because of the tooth. The tooth was just icing.

I couldn't see a dentist while there because our insurance swore they'd nail me with "out--of-network" charges that we couldn't afford.  They didn't consider a broken-in-half bicuspid a dental "emergency."  And so I took my Ibuprofen every six hours and I tried not to whine too much.

When I saw my dentist, his first words were "This has been open for over a week?  This is a root canal, I'm sorry."

My answer, of course, was that we couldn't afford a root canal, so if that was the only option, he was going to have to pull it.  

His name was Michael Blamires, and he decided to do his best to patch the tooth, creating a second point and protective cover with resin.  He told me that he couldn't make any promises, that, with the tooth having been open for over a week, it would probably develop an infection or decay from the inside out.  He said I might get five days, I might get a year.  Hopefully, enough time to save up for a root canal.

That was nine years ago.  So, thank you, Dr. Blamires.  You did a truly amazing job, and I've sung your praises to every dentist I've met since.  

Now, not being a dentist myself, I'm not sure it's the bicuspid, and I'm not sure I'm looking at a full root canal with crown and build up.  But I probably am.  And if I am?

That $579.00 will almost cover it.

I'm trying to look at this as a stroke of luck, since the tooth was hurting and suddenly, BAM!  I have almost 600 bucks of credit with the dentist.  But it really does feel like just another kick in the ass.  Another case of life thumbing its nose and making even my good luck bad.  

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Speaking of bad luck, remember how suspicious I was of the whole "car only needs to be inspected every two years" thing?  How I called the DMV to confirm, kept asking, "I know that's true for the emissions, but the safety inspection, too?"  And how happy I was that the DMV confirmed?

And was wrong, it turns out.

Hubby stepped out last Saturday morning to take our boy to Hapkido and there it was.  A giant orange sticker on the driver's side window, letting us know we had 48 hours to get the car inspected.   That's 48 hours from 3 am Saturday morning.  That threw the day's plans into disarray as we scrambled to find a inspection station that would see us.  We found one, dropped the 16 bucks.

And then dropped the $140 for the new battery.

Yeah, it's great that we had $140.  We'd been planning on using that to treat ourselves to a meal in Shenandoah National Park.

Again, I guess it's "lucky" we had the cash.  But barely keeping our noses above water somehow doesn't feel "lucky."  It feels endlessly exhausting.

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So, have you been following the Obenshain vs Herring debacle in Virginia?  Are you as tiredly unsurprised by the smug, grinning gall of the republicans?  Changing the rules for counting provisional ballots AFTER the election and ONLY in heavily democrat Fairfax County?  I wish I could say I was stunned, shocked, or otherwise caught off guard, but fact is, the moment they said we were trucking toward a recount, I said "Oh, well, we already know about republicans and recounts.  Let's see what scuzz-baggery they pull out of their sleeves."

Never ones to disappoint, the republicans pulled THIS CHICANERY.

Not sure what they are, but I refuse to believe they're Americans.  If I believe that, then I have to wonder what on earth I'm doing here.

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I've spent the past couple of weekends photographing cemeteries to record the headstones.  I find it incredibly rewarding, strolling through cemeteries, sitting down and poring over stones (or photos of them) and deciphering them.  Some are very old--1700s.  You know me and my "I don't want dead folks to be forgotten" hangup.  So this is satisfying.  I feel like I'm doing something worthwhile. Plus, I've come across some wonderful historical things that make my day--like the woman who freed her slaves in her will back in 1855, or the guy who died during one of Lysander Cutler's raids in Louisa County.  I already knew Lysander from his role in Second Manassas at Brawner's Farm. It was amazing to find that link there in that tiny little cemetery out at the end of a dirt road.

Here are some pics--not of individual headstones, but of the cemeteries in general:

Some might call it "ghoulish" or assume I've some dippy Goth thing going on, but that's not it.  I love cemeteries because they're beautiful.  They're home to the last, loving tributes to people who AREN'T anymore, people who WERE, and that makes them incredibly special.  They're history, memory, and love all wrapped up in a wonderful natural setting.  If you have a good digital camera, a pen and notebook, and an afternoon, take the time to hit your local boneyards.  Photograph each stone with an eye for clarity of inscription and shape of stone.  Then hit Find-a-Grave and go to work.  A lot of those stones are already photographed/catalogued, but your picture might be better, it might be clearer or be from a different angle that will help folks trying to decipher them.

Do it.  These stones aren't forever, and some are fading fast.  And please, don't use shaving cream or other harsh chemicals to highlight the inscriptions.  Instead, try water (or snow, if it's winter), light, mirrors (to redirect sunlight and play up shadows) or, as a last resort, talc or fine-ground flour. Not talcum baby powder (which has stearic asid in it), but pure talc.   I've never used anything, but I've seen some amazing results with these techniques, so you should look it up if you're interested.

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And that's about it.  Here, have some interesting Utah names:

• LaReta
• Ranada
• Ensign
• Eris
• ADonna
• Rulon
• JoOnna
• Winda