What a week…

It’s been a whirlwind week, for the blog and (especially) for me, personally.

I had surgery on Tuesday. A gym-class injury I sustained in January 1989 caught up with me. Several front teeth were horribly displaced, and it took a lot of work to save them and get them back to where they’re supposed to be, including two years of braces. Ultimately I needed root canals in three of them (two in 1993 and another in 1997), but that allowed me to lead a normal life. But more recently, the tooth most severely injured started failing. I got several opinions, and all said it needed to come out. So that, along with a bone graft, a gum graft, and a temporary implant, all happened Tuesday.

Not knowing what I’d be up to doing after the procedure, I wrote a bunch of material in advance.

I spent the week in pain. Alternating 800 mg of ibuprofen and 1000 mg of acetaminophen every 3 hours reduced the pain to something comparable to what happens when you burn the roof of your mouth on scalding-hot pizza. I’d have my moments where I’d be fine, but I’d also have moments where I wasn’t very aware of what was going on around me. My mom drove in for the week to help me, and I actually made it back to work on Friday, though admittedly I wasn’t at 100% productivity.

During my three days at home, I was able to sit down and write for longer than I usually do. That allowed me to dust off some material I never finished, and to write in more depth than I can when I just have 30-45 minutes in the evening to work with. It also allowed me to post content in the morning, which isn’t my usual habit.

My periodontist called me on Saturday, and after we talked, he prescribed a local anesthetic that I could use for the pain. It calmed things down to the point that I could use the plastic guard he had made for me, to protect the affected areas. That combination makes the pain a lot more tolerable, more along the lines of the day after you bite your cheek when eating.

So it was an uncomfortable–and not to mention expensive–week. In the long run I’ll be more comfortable. After the injury, this particular tooth was always 1mm longer than its counterpart. It hadn’t been before. I don’t know if it was noticeable to anyone else, but sometimes, depending on what I was eating, it bothered me a lot. I don’t know if the added length affected its longevity or not, but I doubt it helped anything.

Now that I’ve had a few days to adjust to my new temporary reality, I expect to be back at work for close to 40 hours. I have a follow-up appointment on Wednesday.

I’m not quite sure what the rest of the week will bring, blog-wise. I wrapped up all but two posts I was never able to finish. Well, that’s not quite true–there’s some stuff in my backlog that remains, but only 2-3 remain that I think would make the world a better place if they were finished. But I’ll come up with something. Technology is interesting again.