(no subject)

[noahgibbs]

My dentist appointment today went well.

As of, like, six months ago I hadn't been to a dentist in over five years. Long time. I had a number of random problems in my mouth, and significant but not advanced gum disease. There's the little thing they do with the ominous hooked instrument measuring how far into your gums they can stick a thin blunt object -- one to three millimeters is normal, four to six is gum disease, more than six they don't bother to measure and tell you you've got problems.

I went from four-to-six in most areas of my mouth to "three spots with a couple of fours each" in six months. That took me from definite periodontal disease to normal for an adult male (I couldn't tell you how females differ). At this point my mouth is generally in good shape, I've apparently got reasonable dental hygeine and the dentist's advice is "keep doing what you've been doing".

A few years ago I went on a "remedial life improvement" program. Nothing formal, just a decision on my part to get good at some stuff I was ignoring. My apartment is in good shape now. My teeth are in good shape now. My weight and fitness are quite reasonable, certainly by contrast. I've taken a bunch of classes and I'm anything but one-dimensional in conversation. Well, okay, in most conversations at least.

This ties into my earlier realization that I need to reconsider the direction of my life. I'm really mostly done with this one. I mean, the other day I was invited to a "nice casual" event and I even had something appropriate and slightly dressy to wear, at least if you ignored my sandals.

But what next? Do I retire and/or take up shuffleboard? Start a business? Pursue my abandoned dreams of becoming a muppet or an old Chinese man? Reinvent Hare Krishna as a bloodthirsty cult of assassins led by a God-Emperor? Knit?

I was gonna check out Brezsny to find out, but it's another day or two before the next horoscope comes out. I've even quoted the current one already in this journal.

Comments

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

improve your Go skills
http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html

gum yuckies

[ironangel]

eww, I had the same problem. no dental insurance for a while. :(

did they do a debridement? (sp??)

they suck. especially by old Air Force dentists who a) do your whole mouth at once and b) don't use anesthetic. *shudder*

Re: gum yuckies

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

I don't know what a debridement is, but they called what they did "root planing". I don't remember it requiring significant amounts of anaesthesia -- it left my mouth feeling weird and my teeth feeling just slightly loose for a day or so, but it wasn't overall bad.

But then, I'm not so big on all this anaesthetic stuff. I'm one of those weirdos who tends to be basically okay with having all kinds of things poked into my mouth in random ways.

Doctor Budak (who I highly recommend) laughed about that after doing the initial measurement with the little crooked "4-6 mm" measurement device. He'd just stuck it into basically every space where two teeth meet in my mouth, upper and lower, interior and exterior sides, causing a significant percentage of the spots to bleed (none do any more). He asked if things were okay. I said "works for me".

He chuckled. Then he sort of giggled. Then he pointed out to me what he'd just done in roughly the terms above. "Works for me," he snorted, just in case I'd forgotten what I said.

Despite that, he's a damn fine dentist :-)

And I suppose that means I'm a good patient.

[katharos.livejournal.com]

Well, my plan is to move to Vermont and become a farmer. OK, more like self sufficient gardener, who makes enough money to pay property taxes by making neat gizmos/crafts and or software and selling it in town. This life style is probably equivalent to inspecting ones navel... Anyways...
-katherineg