here’s mollie, after our run yesterday.
we didn’t have to run today because it did start snowing last night, and then it snowed some more today. not as much as they predicted, but there were at about four or five inches on the ground, plus it was very very cold.
i started my day today with a consultation with the oral surgeon. i was completely dreading it, because the parents had such awful things to day about my brother’s experience with an oral surgeon, plus i’m annoyed now that i have to get the tooth pulled because it seems fine now. i realize logically that it isn’t fine, but because i don’t want to kill myself because of any horrible pain, it feels like it just should be all right now and not in need of pulling.
i called my dentist the other day, though, and he pointed out the moronitude of my thinking.
so this morning i drove in the bitter cold on the snow-packed roads in a bad mood about the whole thing and when i got there i had to fill out approximately three million pages of stuff. when i finished i noticed a tv monitor on the wall playing an animated video about PUSHING UP A LOW SINUS.
doesn’t sound riveting, does it? but the last guy i went to, the periodontist, said i probably wouldn’t be able to have an implant because my sinus is too low. who knew? i have to say i was surprised that there was a video about it at the oral surgeon’s office, but i guess it must be a common thing, these low sinuses.
the video showed what would happen in the procedure to raise the sinus up so an implant could be fitted.
IT LOOKED LIKE A HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE. even though it was just animation, it was easy to imagine actual cutting, and drilling, the pushing up of the sinus and apparently FOLDING IT OVER, and then squirting some kind of something up in the cavity. then the SEWING UP and the BIG STITCHES in the gum.
doesn’t it seem unnatural that a sinus would be folded over? i mean, really? plus this implant they put in the gum looks like a big metal screw and i couldn’t help but watch in horrified fascination as they showed a couple different ways they did it – one way looked like DRILLING A FLAP IN THE GUM and then POKING IT OPEN like some kind of DOOR, and then squirting some stuff up into the space where the sinus had been, and then sticking some kind of patch over the whole thing, MADE OF WHAT???
the text on the screen said that sometimes they put BONE in the gum to fill the hole
WHERE DID THEY GET THE BONE???
by the time i went in, i was thoroughly convinced that i DID NOT WANT AN IMPLANT NO MATTER WHAT.
i didn’t have to wait long for the surgeon (he was just wrapping up a surgery and i can’t imagine jumping out of bed really early in the morning and doing surgery, which i guess is why i’m not a surgeon), and he was very nice and he answered all my questions and said he’d start with pulling the tooth, but they’re going to give me “light” sedation because it might come out in pieces and he’d have to dig around and pull out the shards of tooth and just hearing about that made me very happy about the sedation, the heavier the better.
and then he said after it healed, in a couple months, we’d see about the next step, hopefully an implant if all went well. i told him that i’d watched the horrible video and wasn’t too keen on the implant and what about my low sinuses?
he didn’t seem too offended that i said his video was horrible, and he said there were some simple ways to fix the low sinus thing, and we’d just have to wait and see anyway. he was all very laid-back , and he did make me feel that he knew what the hell he was doing.
so i’m going to get my tooth pulled on ST. PATRICK’S DAY, what a fun way to spend the day. kevin has to drive me there because i’ll be in NO CONDITION TO DRIVE HOME.
but hey, it’s not for over a month, nothing to worry about.
i was in such a good mood when i left that i decided to go to lowe’s and buy some more paint, even though it was snowing and the back roads were pretty dreadful to drive on. but i wanted to find a color for the baseboards and part of the door, and something happened to me during the short snowy drive and i decided i needed to find another color entirely for two of the walls.
two of the walls were light blue and two were white. i wasn’t that crazy about them because the blue looked really really pale and it looked like a mistake and they were too close in color.
I’LL GET SOME YELLOW, i thought to myself. something nice and pale.
it took me almost forever to pore through the millions of samples – dijon, dandelion chain, noon sharp, corncob, lemon tree, lightning bug, yazoo city yellow, canary’s song, powdered maize, who has the job to make up all these dumb names?
i settled on golden haze; it was pale but not too pale because i figured that since the blue was paler than it looked, the yellow would be, too.
i then had an agonizing half-hour trying to decide the complementary color. i looked at purples, at peaches, at greens, at reds. it was ridiculous. finally i chose a deep red.
i took my paints home and started right in…
AND THE YELLOW IS VERY VERY BRIGHT. not paler than the chip, but DARKER.
it looks to me exactly like an egg yolk, one in a hard-boiled egg. it also made the blue look even bluer.
i’m not happy with it. i’m sure it looks like some team or school colors. hmm, will the deep red make it look like the flag of some country?
so now i don’t know what to do. i can’t bear the thought of any more painting, but i don’t know how i’m going to live with it. kevin pointed out that much of one yellow wall will be covered with the new sink and mirror. plus i bet the red will make it better…plus i can put up lots of pictures…
i was startled by the blue that i picked out for the dining room, but now i like it.
maybe i just need to give it time.
besides, i’m too tired to go try to find yet another color tonight.
oh, and where they get the bone for the graft – from a DEAD BODY.
the miracle of science.
ok then,
grace.