fox

Orthodontist on Wednesday, and my front teeth are still not where he wants them. Shit and goddamn. But the process is not painful at this point, and it's true that my teeth are not entirely straight, and I can't fault the guy for saying "I can't let you leave my practice with your teeth looking less than perfect, are you crazy, how would that reflect on me?", and that's not even what he's saying - he's saying "The further from perfect your alignment is when you leave here, the more likely you are to have a return of your painful TMJ issues." So there's that, and I'm glad he isn't willing to half-ass it.

I'm having a good week at work, for whatever reason - nothing has really changed, but this week I'm chugging along Doing Stuff that in other weeks I have found draggy and depressing.

Went back to yoga tonight for the first time in three weeks; two weeks ago I didn't feel well and last week I was out of town. And it felt great, of course, but it also hurt like hell some of the time. Any pose where my hands are on the floor is really hard for me because it turns out my wrists don't bend as far back as I'd like them to for those poses to be less uncomfortable. My teacher points out that everything is connected to everything else, and my wrist is inflexible because the muscle on the inside of my forearm is tight because the biceps is tight because because because because because. So I'm going to also focus on more plain stretch-my-arms-out stretches in the interest of my wrists not hurting when I do Table pose. On the other hand, Crescent was also really hard tonight, which it usually isn't - the standing poses are usually the easiest for me because say what you will about any and all parts of my body, one thing that is true is that my legs are very strong. (As a friend once observed about her own self in a witticism I am stealing without shame: they ought to be, they've been hauling my ass around all this time.) It was even harder on the right leg than on the left, which is very weird. Aaand I also need to learn and embrace some sort of stretchy thing that will limber up my hamstrings, because I'd like to be able to touch the floor more gracefully than I can now.

Tidied up my coffee table last night. It's not bare now, but it's a lot less cluttered than it was, and I am not allowed to buy any more lip balm for an awfully long time.

♥

1. Gentleman Caller is still awesome. :-) ♥

2. Remember how I had emergency root canal a couple of months ago? I've had a temporary crown since then because they wanted to be extra-super-positive the infection was healing up and the abscess was filling in before putting anything permanent on there, which seems sensible to me. So on Monday I went in and had another x-ray, and everything is groovy, and they took off the temporary and cleaned things up a bit (which, disappointingly, involved burning away some gum tissue with a laser, but on the up side, when I asked nicely they did this without shooting me full of novocaine first - since, you know, the laser thing is going to hurt no matter what when the novocaine wears off, so why suffer the pain of the needle as well?) and took the impression for the permanent crown (gold, because it's the sturdiest, and what I want is the thing least likely to fall apart and send me back to do this again in future; GC heard "gold" and said "grillz? you're going to have a grill? nice."), and stuck another temporary crown on there. Which took forever to fit, and in fact it didn't quite - too high in the back - and this morning, as I was innocently eating breakfast, off came temporary crown #2. So instead of going to work I went back to the dentist and then came to work.

3. Last week my dad's platelets were a little too low to have his chemo (they don't do it if the platelets are below 100, and his were 94. Today they're 106. Apparently the "standard range" is 150-400, so I have no earthly idea what those numbers mean, but I'm reassured that 94 isn't badly low, just low enough that they don't want to do other traumatic things, just to be on the safe side. So he was going to get re-tested and possibly have the poison this week instead, and I called the house to see if he had done so and how it went, and got no answer, so I left a message and then called my mom on her cell, which - when she answered - was the point at which I realized that today is not Thursday. Durr. I was asking about how everything had gone yesterday, and I wanted news from yesterday's visit and blah blah blah, when in fact it's today's visit and it's still in its early stages (though, as you've seen, the platelets are high enough that once everyone who needs to see the results has seen them, he'll be able to get the treatment today).

4. ♥ I'm sorry. I try not to be, you know, how I'd roll my eyes if other people were that way right in my face, but sometimes I can't help it. ★.☆

5. I forget the fifth thing.

I got a call today from my dentist's office noting that the insurance had rejected my claim for the crown I'm going to need on the tooth that was root-canaled last month. Turns out they rejected it because of "frequency", because I had an onlay on that tooth less than five years ago. They didn't cover that work, but that's apparently beside the point - it's not a question of how often they're willing to pay up, but of how often they're willing to admit work ought to be done. After several rounds of disagreeing with people about that, I finally got a supervisor's supervisor who - I mean, this is making a long afternoon's story extremely short - heard me read a paragraph that said "Limitations of service - Placement or replacement of single crowns, inlays, onlays, single and abutment buildups and post and cores, bridges, full and partial dentures – one within five years of their placement," and said "Wait, yours says 'one'? Mine says 'not within five years of initial placement'." And agreed that the discrepancy was problematic. And is Looking Into It (along with the question of whether "destroyed by root canal" ought to be an exception to "onlay didn't last five years") and will get back to me tomorrow or Monday, and left his full name and direct dial in case that doesn't happen.

Listen: I was polite to everyone, even when I was annoyed at the fact that they had told me the same thing five times instead of acknowledging that they had told me the same thing four times already, I had understood it each of those times, and I wanted to be escalated to someone else please; and I apologized to no fewer than four people for the fact that I was annoyed on their phones when clearly they were just the messengers and not the people actually making the decisions that were making me angry. But I wasn't having any of it! The things they were telling me could not possibly be true, and if they were true, they couldn't possibly be right. All over again I am thankful for being in a position where I can stick with it until I get something that might someday grow up into an answer I will find at least reasonable, and hopefully actually acceptable.

So the moral of the story is this: (Of Course We Must All Always Do So Socially; But From A Customer Service Representative,) Never Take No For An Answer.

( So a few weeks ago ... )

So now I'm set up with antibiotics and yogurt and the fervent hope that when this tooth is taken care of, I will be done having trouble with these $%#!%@ teeth.

Last night was a big ol' backslide. Slept in 45-minute bursts from about 11 to about 3 before the combined Xtreme acupressure, pain relievers, ice pack, pacing, and numbing swish of Listerine combined to do their thing so I could fall asleep for reals. (I'm not convinced the pain relievers did a damn thing.) It's better in the jaw muscle now, but the nerves around the teeth are firing whenever they please and my god, I just need them to stop.

PT today. Maybe they will have advice.

Today has been a very difficult TMJ day. Actually a difficult week. Since I had the braces adjusted on Tuesday everything has hurt like hell. Two nights in a row the pain woke me up; this morning I went to the PT in the hope that he would be able to help not only with the head and neck and dizziness thing but also with the jaw thing. I may have cried a little while I was telling him about how hard my summer has been. Got a little electro-stim on my neck before I left, and that was fine, but my jaw has really never hurt so much.

I finally called the orthodontist's office, and he called back an hour later to agree that it shouldn't hurt this much and suggest a couple of things that might help. Bump the invisalign tray back to night-time only, for one; cut away the last molar from that tray if that doesn't work, for another. I came home and took 800mg of ibuprofen and all evening have been having limited success with a combination of heat and ice and stretching; when the pain ebbs it's not bad at all, just the sort of feeling like the joint is bruised (which by now it may be) - but when it stops ebbing it is excruciating.

Help. :-(

My nephew is ridiculously awesome and I get to see him again next weekend.

In the meantime, four days in the office, one day getting my teeth yanked around and my car fixed, one date scheduled, one suggested (and not by me) but not yet planned and the jury's out on whether that will actually go forward. What else? Oh! There is a chance that this visit to the orthodontist will be the last but one. (I don't know how much of a chance. But non-zero, for the first time, so that's cool.)

Awful, awful TMJ days lately. Monday night was the worst (I lay in bed counting my pulse by the throbbing of the whole right side of my face), but it's not as much better since then as I'd like. Last night I observed a hole in the right side of my mouth guard. I have in fact chewed right through it.

Combine the splitting headache with the ( hormones ) - and I just want to go home, curl up under a blanket, have a good cry out, and then sleep for the rest of the day.

I don't actually mind the brackets poking my lower lip. I don't even mind - much - that I can't have popcorn for a year. But I'll tell you what I'm not nuts about, and that's the fact that at the moment, I can't bite all the way down on my back teeth without shearing a bracket off the front. It turns out this makes chewing food extremely difficult. ... Guess I'm restricted for the moment to things I can safely swallow half-chewed. :-P



I'm completely confused by the description I've read of how the wire works - where it's pliable when it's cold, but stiffens when warmed up to body temperature. That just seems to contradict everything I've ever known (okay, believed I knew) about metallurgy.

1. Nothing like waking up naturally, realizing you didn't hear an alarm, realizing it's much too light for the alarm not to have gone off, looking at the clock, and seeing "3:49" flashing in your face. It's a little exciting, when you still don't know what time it was three hours and forty-nine minutes ago.

Turned out the actual time was only a few minutes after I'd have got up anyway, if the power had never gone out, so on balance that's a win, but I don't like that kind of adrenaline spike in the morning.


2. More dental work today - but I genuinely believe I am on the downhill slope of this thing. Along with whatever else they're doing, they'll be able to tighten up the temporary crown, which has come a little loose (I can push it back into place with a ~click~ after I floss), what fun.


3. I heard on the radio yesterday where it appears likely there will be an iPhone for Verizon in January. Not sorry I waited!, and a little glad I didn't get a new some-other-kind-of-phone and bind myself to Sprint for another two years.