Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sweet Home Alabama!!
We drove to Alabama for a baptism and visit our friend on March 29. Their daughter was baptized on her birthday. We had lunch and cake at their house.



Spring Has Sprung
More downhill after 40
What is your worst fear?
One of mine is a couple of hours at the dentist office. I gag extremely easily and even the simply act of having x-rays taken of my teeth usually causes me to dry vomit because of this reflex. Over the years I have avoided going to the dentist.
Last week, this caught up with me in a big way. Starting Friday, one of my teeth became incapacitatingly painful. Unfortunately, my dentist office was closed on Friday, and Tylenol and ibuprofen did little to dull the pain. Orajel did provide some relief. I kept thinking of the scene in Tom Hank's Castaway where he uses the old skate to remove his tooth and contemplated this option. I resolved not to eat again because every time I did, it would be an hour before I could do anything else but crawl up in a ball. (I finally found that pudding was a better option.) Oddly, by Sunday the pain started to be bearable.
Early Monday morning, I saw my dentist and he confirmed that I needed a root canal, but told me I would have to wait until Wednesday morning so that the antibiotics he prescribed had some time to work.
Early Wednesday morning, I submitted myself to the torture chamber. I had come down with a cold Tuesday, so the advice to "breath through my nose" was tragicomical. I must say that the dentist did an admirable job of putting up with my struggles, and because they used this little screen device to isolate the work area from the rest of my mouth, it was actually less of a struggle to avoid drowning in my own saliva than usual. But there were two times when for whatever reason, a large amount of fluid came streaming over the screen and the technician didn't suction this out before I gagged on it. At one point in time, my mouth actually began to shiver out of control for some reason. But finally, about an hour and a half later, they were finished. And we were quite a bit poorer.
The only upside of this rather painful episode is that I'm down to 217 lbs because of the lack of eating for the past week! Pudding diet anyone?
One of mine is a couple of hours at the dentist office. I gag extremely easily and even the simply act of having x-rays taken of my teeth usually causes me to dry vomit because of this reflex. Over the years I have avoided going to the dentist.
Last week, this caught up with me in a big way. Starting Friday, one of my teeth became incapacitatingly painful. Unfortunately, my dentist office was closed on Friday, and Tylenol and ibuprofen did little to dull the pain. Orajel did provide some relief. I kept thinking of the scene in Tom Hank's Castaway where he uses the old skate to remove his tooth and contemplated this option. I resolved not to eat again because every time I did, it would be an hour before I could do anything else but crawl up in a ball. (I finally found that pudding was a better option.) Oddly, by Sunday the pain started to be bearable.
Early Monday morning, I saw my dentist and he confirmed that I needed a root canal, but told me I would have to wait until Wednesday morning so that the antibiotics he prescribed had some time to work.
Early Wednesday morning, I submitted myself to the torture chamber. I had come down with a cold Tuesday, so the advice to "breath through my nose" was tragicomical. I must say that the dentist did an admirable job of putting up with my struggles, and because they used this little screen device to isolate the work area from the rest of my mouth, it was actually less of a struggle to avoid drowning in my own saliva than usual. But there were two times when for whatever reason, a large amount of fluid came streaming over the screen and the technician didn't suction this out before I gagged on it. At one point in time, my mouth actually began to shiver out of control for some reason. But finally, about an hour and a half later, they were finished. And we were quite a bit poorer.
The only upside of this rather painful episode is that I'm down to 217 lbs because of the lack of eating for the past week! Pudding diet anyone?