The Pros and Cons

So, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that my teeth are no longer my teeth. I think coming out from under the Vicodin haze has something to do with it. Well, that and not being in the kind of pain that makes people snap on their near and dear.

The worst part of the day I had it done was the bleeding. I was bleeding like a stuck pig and I couldn't keep up with it. I spit out as much as I could, and swallowed the rest, but it was just gory. Mamaw needed to hit Sam's Club while we were up there so I just stayed in the car and let the diazepam work on me. Of course sitting in a car by yourself in a parking lot draws a bit of attention, especially when you look like you're gorked out, which I was.

That attention can be neatly deflected if you don't give a crap about any of the people who are staring. I just stared vacantly (I couldn't have put a focused look on my face if I had wanted to) out the window in the direction of the stares, smiled as much as I could with my top lip numb, and bit down just enough to let the (fresh, bright red) blood squeeze over the front of my new teeth and run down to pool at my bottom lip before dripping over and running down my chin.

They decided it wasn't polite to stare.

Things are starting to heal up, and I'm starting to perk up. So I decided to make a list of the things that are good about this. And of course, with the good, comes the bad. And, since I'm still battling to eat more than a few bites of anything but pudding, I threw in a few pros about being this far along in the healing process.

Pro: The big one, stopping the whole nerve damage thing before it became less an issue of dentistry and more an issue of reconstructive surgery.

Con: I don't have my teeth anymore, and I have to go through the healing process, although thankfully only once. And along with the not having my teeth thing comes the nightmares about things like getting bucked off and them popping out. I'm not talking "oooo that would suck" bad dreams, I'm talking waking up in a cold sweat with tears running down my face nightmares. *shudder*

Pro: The bleeding has pretty much stopped, which is good for my stomach.

Con: The blood has been replaced by the same kind of fluid that comes out when you scrape your knuckles. You know the stuff that gets yellow and crusty? We always called it protoplasm, but I don't know what it really is. Of course inside the mouth it doesn't get crusty. Noooo... it mixes with the saliva to become something around the consistency of snot. Which I have to spit and rinse out. Just farking ew. Of course, putting a foreign object in your mouth puts your spit glands on overdrive anyway, I've been drooling like a St Bernard on a short chain in front of a honey ham.

Pro: There's no such thing as a hard to reach place on my top teeth anymore.

Con: I now brush my teeth with the bathroom door shut and locked. Even when no one else is around. I'd do it with the lights off if I could.

Pro: No more hot or cold sensitivity.

Con: I'm having to learn to talk all over again. S's, K's, G's and D's are particularly difficult. If I don't concentrate, I sound like a slightly "challenged" drunk trying to say her ABC's. If someone asks me to say "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" I'm going to have to hit them.

Pro: Perfect teeth.

Con: I have to wait a month before I can have truly perfect teeth. The temporary plate is nice and even, but apparently I have a short upper lip, and the dentist wasn't satisfied with the amount of "gum" that was showing when I smiled so he altered them and brought the "teeth" up higher. It's an amazing job considering he did it in fifteen minutes in his own little lab there, but it's not "perfect." On the permanent plate I can design my own teeth, if I want. That ought to be interesting.

Pro: The swelling is going down. When it was done, I had a ridge of swelling all the way across my face. It looked like my cheeks and under my nose were stuffed with cotton. As it's progressed it's gone from that, to just looking like someone decked me, to just looking a little puffy.

Con: The swelling in the gums is going down too, changing the way the denture fits. And while adjustments are free (I love my dentist) they're also three hours away. Which frustrates him as much as it does me, he would like to have me in every day to tweak the fit so that it doesn't cause sore spots or get loose enough to fall down and embarrass me. But then, that man is a genius fitting a denture anyway. I went in yesterday with a couple of spots that were bugging and he looked at my mouth and saw five more that weren't bugging yet but were going to, went back to his little lab, and came back in ten minutes with what felt like a whole new denture.

That's all I can think of right now. The swelling will be under better control since I'm on 800mg of Ibuprofen instead of the Vicodin... but until the bleeding was under control the Ibuprofen wasn't an option. I'm still taking the Vicodin at night, but once I get to sleep I'm able to sleep all the way through the night without getting up to take another pill. Of course, I drool in my sleep and because eight hours is longer than I go during the day between rinsing I get that lovely snotty goo running out the corner of my mouth, so I have to sleep with a tea towel over the pillow, but it's still an improvement over the first couple of nights. I ruined one of Farmmom's pillows with bloodstains, even with the tea towel.

If I'd had a choice, I wouldn't have gone through this, but once I'm all healed up and I can eat and talk again, I think I'm going to be able to be glad I did it.

It Seems I Was Right...

All these years. I had a good reason to not want to go back to the dentist, even though I didn't know the real reason.

After the x-rays and initial examination, the dentist brought in this nifty tray that looked something like one of those whitening trays except metal, and a lot more ominous. He filled it with a pink putty that tasted faintly of mint but had the texture of overcooked pudding, and made a mold of my mouth.

Some of you are realizing where this is going.

I know now (because I was drugged to within an inch of unconsciousness at the time) that during the examination he discovered that somehow, I managed to get nerve damage in the top of my mouth. He couldn't tell exactly where or what caused it at this point, but he's betting on one of those inept dentists that I've been to before.

The result of this nerve damage was that my teeth were dead. Improper nerve function basically made my body think they weren't there from the gum out, so my body did nothing to maintain them. According to the x-rays the roots were still good, which he told mom (me druggy, remember?) was a really good thing, since from the looks of it the damage had spread, and could possibly have spread into my jaw.

So, when I went back Thursday, on the happy pills again, he sat me in the chair and I firmly believe performed a miracle with a needle, because I actually got numb right away.

He then proceeded, with his son, to pull all fifteen of my upper teeth. They're gone, poof, no more.

I've spent the last three days pretty much constantly knocked out on vicodin, swallowing blood, and trying to eat when I'm not out cold.

Oh, and trying to learn to deal with a big chunk of basically the same stuff they use for fake fingernails in the top of my mouth.

Given what the doc said, I'm glad I did it. I hate this, but I would have hated bone grafts on my jaw worse.

I'm still pretty druggy right now, although I cut back to half a vicodin this morning and that's starting to wear off. It's really frustrating to not be able to eat anything that isn't pretty much mush, and on top of that I'm still swallowing a little blood. I'm spitting as much of it as I can out but I haven't really figured out all the nuances to spitting with the new teeth yet. So, the blood makes my stomach a little upset, and the vicodin adds a little to that, so I can only put so much down there before it goes "ok no more."

So, readers, now you know. Now you know why I've been silent on here, and why I was kind of reluctant to discuss what they thought they'd have to do. I mean, come on, what 23 year old has to get dentures? Not the happiest point in my life.

But a part of my life nonetheless. Onwards and Upwards, as they say.

Or maybe that last part is the vicodin talking... I'm not really sure.

"Help!"

Marilyn brought in a yearling, special request for halter breaking. She assigned the little guy to a couple of the girls, and they've been working with him. Unfortunately, since it's not a regular class they have to do it in between their other classes. Which doesn't suit their schedules, or their sensibilities, entirely.

Anyway, this little guy is a brat, he's been babied and spoiled at home, and he has no respect for people.

And they're trying to pick up his feet. They had issues with one hind foot that he wanted to kick out on, and they asked me for help. I tried his front foot first, because frankly even a yearling has a heck of a kick, and I like my skull in the shape that it's in now.

"He picks up his front feet, you just have to be quick about grabbing them."

Ummmm no. That's not giving you the foot, that's striking. When you touch the leg and it comes up and down really quickly, that's taking the foot away from you. Just because you can grab it now doesn't mean you'll be able to when he's grown. When the foot paws at the ground coming down, that's striking.

So, I worked with him on one side, running a lead rope around his legs and rubbing them until he quit freaking out about it, and then using hands.

Apparently, even though they asked for my help, and when they bugged me about putting him away enough that I accepted the progress of being able to grab his back leg below the hock without him kicking he wasn't kicking at me anymore, my methods aren't pleasing to them.

Oh, and on top of that I made him move his hindquarters away from me when I said, instead of trying to turn them towards me whenever he got tired of what I was doing, and he was standing quietly while I worked with him.

So, one of the girls called her aunt, who is hundreds of miles away and doesn't know exactly what the little brat is doing, and took her advice.

I appreciate that it's not my project, and that Marilyn gave the whole thing over to them, but I have discussed the issue with Marilyn herself, and her opinion pretty much matches mine.

The little bugger needs to learn some respect, and since he's not scared of people at all that means he's gonna have to learn it the way he would in the herd. If he acts bratty, he gets "kicked" or "nipped."

In other words, the little sucker needs his spoiled little butt beat when he pulls crap. Otherwise, he's gonna wind up thinking he's the boss, and trying to enforce it, and get someone hurt.

Of course, it's not my project, so I get to watch. We'll see.

Meanwhile, if they want help, they can just deal with my methods, or they can ask someone else. You don't get instant results, and it has to be consistent. He's already learning bad habits which, if they're not corrected now, someone will have to fix later. I wish them luck.

Good Lord

I thought I was being smart. See, there is only one washer in my apartment building. Two dryers, but just one washer.

So, I thought I'd just run down to the coin-op laundromat and do all of my laundry at once. I walked in and looked around and thought "ok, maybe just the whites."

Ran my whites through the washer (which cost me more per load but less in time because I had two loads of whites to do, I'm way behind on laundry) and when it came time to dry them...

Half of the dryers are out of order. The other half, three hispanic families are playing musical dryers trying to find the one with the most heat.

Farmmom's dad ran a coin-op laundry for many many years, and he was good at it. If he'd been in charge of this one, he'd have shut the whole damn thing down for two weeks until everything worked, built on another five hundred square feet at least, and had a buttload more seating.

That place is just crap, and it's not even that old, it was only built about five years ago.

I won't be going back, in spite of the fact that I can't do all my laundry at once here. That place was just horrid. I brought my whites back here to dry, where I could sit in the comfort of my own home instead of being crammed into a small building with too many other people, not enough seating and an overall odor of fried chicken.

Shhh It's a Secret

Ok, I'm gonna share something with ya'll, and it's probably going to tear my tough-girl rep all to hell. I have very few true fears, I don't like a lot of things, but I'm not honestly afraid of much.

I don't like snakes and I kill poisonous ones if they're somewhere that they'll pose a danger to me or my critters, but I'm not afraid of them.

I don't like crawling into small spaces, and if I can get out of it, I will, but I'm not claustrophobic. And just for reference, a "small space" for me is something along the order of "no one else over the age of ten will even fit through the opening."

There are two things I've discovered that I am honestly afraid of. One is sudden drops straight down from a height. I discovered that one on the Big Drop on top of the Stratosphere hotel in Vegas. I really wanted to go on that ride, I thought it would be a blast... And then I rode it. The first drop I screamed... once I stopped screaming my body just wouldn't breathe again until my feet were on the ground. My mind was saying that I was fine, strapped into a nice solid seat, no way I was going anywhere, but some primitive part of me was saying "Aaaauuuugggghhhhhhhhh!"

So I don't ride those kinds of rides anymore, and I scratched bungee jumping off my things to try before I'm dead list. No big deal, really.

The other thing I'm afraid of? The dentist.

Let me clarify here. I'm not afraid of the needle, I could care less about needles. Watching my own blood being drawn makes me queasy but I'm the girl with a tattoo and a few piercings, needles themselves don't bother me. I'm not even afraid of the drill. Sure, it's not a pleasant sound, and the feeling in the jaw is just freaking wrong *shudder* but that's more of an intense dislike.

There isn't one aspect of dentistry that freaks me out. Taken one at a time, I could face each individual thing, no big deal. Except for one thing. See, I'm odd. Novocaine takes about twice as long to numb me as your average person. I've been that way for a while. Once it kicks in, it's just as effective, and maybe more so, but you have to have that patience in the beginning.

Not every dentist believes you when you tell them that you're not numb when they think you should be. Especially if you mark that nifty box that says "fear of dentist" on the paperwork. By the way, why don't they ask you what you're afraid of on those things?? Every dentist I've ever told "dude, being here scares me, so please be nice" has tried to sneak up on me with the needle. I don't have a problem with the needle, but I do have a problem with people sneaking up on me with sharp objects.

Anyway, I used to just hate the dentist because of the feeling in my jaw when they'd drill. It makes me want to puke, I'm sorry, it's just wrong. Then I broke a tooth and had to go to a dentist that I'd never been to before. He didn't believe me that I wasn't numb yet, and jabbed me with one of those little metal torture devices they like to call tools. I bit him.

He said ow, I said no shit.

So he gave me more Novocaine. But, when he started work, I wasn't completely numb, so it hurt, so my body ignored the fancy medicine and just kept telling me it hurt. Once you sit through a session of that, something in your brain starts saying "don't do that anymore."

I haven't been back to a dentist since then. Until now, that is.

See, I need some dental work. Considering that the incident above was when I was in high school, it's not surprising, but I've been putting it off. Farmmom and Mamaw found a dentist that they really like, and since Farmmom feels about the way I do about dentists I agreed to consider going to the guy. Last time we were there for Farmmom, he pulled me back into the room to take a quick look, and the instant my butt hit that weird lookin chair, I started shaking. When he asked me to open my mouth, I started to gray out. That's about the point where we figured out that I might be just a little bit worse than Farmmom on the dentist thing.

When I finally caved and agreed to schedule an appointment, I had to go to the bathroom, because I started dry heaving. Just from thinking about it.

Yeah, it's not pretty. But, this dentist being the nice guy he is, and understanding the chickens like me, agreed to call in a prescription for a mild sedative for me to take before my appointment. You know, so I wouldn't pass out, or puke on him, or anything like that.

The appointment is tomorrow. Since he's never seen me professionally before and putting the work off has caused it to become more than it would have been, I get to go in for a look-see and get the x-rays etc taken, and then go back for the actual work next week. I have in my possession five two mg tabs of Diazepam. Apparently, he wanted to have extra on hand if I needed it.

It feels really stupid to be afraid of the dentist to this degree, but no matter what the logical part of my brain says, the rest of it goes into full terror mode whenever the subject of me getting into that chair comes up. And when I'm actually in the chair, there is no logical part of my brain.

It's just freaking scary. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go pet my teddy bear for comfort... all this talking about it has me a little queasy....

The Tub

After increasingly frustrated and frustrating attempts at getting the slow drain on the tub fixed, I finally got them to at least attempt to do something.

****************

"We've had problems with this one before, come in here and I'll show you." The manager's husband, the same man that told me when I moved in that he didn't mind me using his internet, just that I shouldn't connect to his network, said to me in a pompous and superior fashion the instant he walked through the door.

"If you can show me some trick that makes the water go down the little hole, great, but I don't think that's gonna work."

"Sure it will, see, this plunger is off kilter and you have to... nngh... get it squirreled around and.... gah.... make sure it's really all the way up." He turned the water on to the merest trickle.

"Well, yeah, that much water would flow through a nervous frog's ass."

So he turned it up, and let it run for a few moments, long enough to get some water in the bottom of the tub, then shut it off and turned to stare at me triumphantly.

I was watching the water. If it drained, I was fully prepared to eat crow, and take a celebratory shower.

When I didn't start apologizing, he turned in confusion to the tub. Standing water.

"Hmm. Well I have to meet a guy in the office, I'll be back in a few with some tools and pull the plunger completely out."

"Okiedokie then, I'm leaving at about two thirty, so make it before then."

"Oh, this will only take me a couple of minutes."

Fast forward to a little later.

*Knock Knock*

"Let's get this thing fixed." He held up... a screw driver.

Ok, I can buy that, after all you have to remove a screw to get the cover for the drain plug off. But he didn't have any other tools.

Fast forward again, because this time, I just sat in the living room eating my lunch instead of watching him pretend to know what he was doing. Suffice to say there was a lot of turn the water on, turn the water off, clank clank, turn the water on.

"I just got a call I have to take care of something else, but I'll be back in a few minutes, ok?"

"Sure, whatever."

*Knock Knock*

"I'm back, and I brought backup!" This time he's carrying the cutest imitation of a pipe snake that I've ever seen, and has another tenant with him. His "backup" is large enough that I wonder if he'll even fit in my itty bitty bathroom.

"Uh huh."

Another trip out, lots of scraping and grunting and water running later, they emerged from my bathroom, looking sweaty.

"I've done all I can, we're gonna have to call someone."

"Figured as much. Just let me know when they're going to be here. I'll be gone all day Friday."

"Oh, they probably won't be able to get here until next week, can you hang in that long, kiddo?"

I could feel the urge to kill rising, but I beat it back with the sure knowledge that I didn't have anywhere handy to stash the body.

"That tub has been slow since I moved in. It improved slightly when they came in and cut the tree roots out of the pipes, but has gotten steadily worse. Now I have a choice of shaving my legs or washing my hair when I shower, because I don't have time for both before the tub overflows. I've told your wife about this problem before, and she always swore that she'd get something done as soon as possible. That's why this month's rent envelope had 'Tub. Won't Drain. Fix It.' written on the section provided for complaints. I've been 'hanging in there' with this problem for nearly seven months now. A week is not a problem, as long as it gets fixed."

"Well, kiddo, I'll call today and see what I can do."

"Fantastic. And stop calling me kiddo."

That's the point where I shut the door.

******************************

So maybe, just maybe, they'll get the damn drain fixed.

If not, then they'll miss next month's rent, and I'll start looking for a different place.

*Whimper*

Since I'm feeling lazy this morning (and am not really sure how to gank the video from LD) I'm going to link over to him here.

Go, watch the vid, then come back here.

Got it? Good. Now I can continue.

Want one, need one, gotta have one! Momma needs a new toy.

Seriously, who wouldn't want a full-auto that folds up and sticks in a back pocket?!?

I think I had a gungasm while I was watching that vid, a small one cause he was in a crowded room and didn't actually shoot it. If he'd shot it I probably would have been licking my screen.