Tag Archives: Illness

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Normalized

I have a list in my Netflix, but didn’t have the bandwidth last night for starting a new series. As Google is always monitoring and listening in, I saw a Harrison Ford movie article on my phone. I realized that I’d seen it as soon as it started streaming. I think I saw it when I had a DVD subscription to Netflix. However, I couldn’t remember how the premise tied everything up, so I watched it with my cell phone handy.

My girlfriend has Flu A. Because I was sick over Thanksgiving week, which is a week that I never work, I didn’t get a flu or COVID shot. That means that I have Flu A too, but I’m not running a practice or raising a toddler, so I simply have a sore face and jaw today. Yesterday sucked and I slept 11-hours in total. She ran a fever of 107 at one point last night and that’s so scary. She’s taking her daughter into the doctor today.

I texted back and forth with my girlfriend and few other folks and watched, “The Age of Adaline.”

This post isn’t about suspending disbelief.

It’s not about medical miracles or neurology.

It’s about alcohol.

I’ve had nothing to drink since 12/30/24.

I go back to work tomorrow, and there will be reasons that I justify for myself to have 1-2 beers.

I won’t though.

Alcohol usage is so normalized.

Let’s get back to this movie.

The love interest tells the protagonist that lovers and glasses of wine should never be counted when she says that she doesn’t want another drink.

The protagonist and her love interest split a bottle of wine in a 1950s convertible that is sitting in a warehouse. They’re not eating.

The characters eat a little bit of dinner and drink two different wines and then have cognac at night.

I don’t think that without my choice that I’ve made, I’d ever have given these scenes a second thought. However, watching the copious amounts of booze that’s consumed in this movie about never aging is alarming. Alcohol is the normal backdrop of every evening shot in the film.

What is your favorite series or movie? Do the characters drink? How much? Why do you think that drinking is a “normal” part of our collective habit?

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Wall Anchor

(Please don’t read this entry if you’re squeamish or triggered by anything that is gross.)

Is in my mouth.

I had a small pain in my molar on occasion–honestly, it would just come and go–and it was a little sensitive to cold for 3-years. It wasn’t unbearable until it wasn’t. On the 26th of February, I took my son out to dinner and we got pan seared steaks. I couldn’t really chew mine. The pain was excruciating. I ate enough to not be starving and then gave him the rest after finishing most of the mashed potatoes and broccoli with peppers.

I guess that I thought that midway through last month that I had some weird mobile bacteria because I had stomach stuff, a sinus infection, and when on the 14th of this month the roof of my mouth looked like it had a mandarin orange in it, I knew that there was something really wrong.

I found out what it was.

Yesterday I was so nervous. I had my wisdom teeth out when they got impacted when I was in my early 20s, but since that time I have only ever had a couple of fillings. I have never been to an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

What a lovely man. He was calm, caring, professional and explained everything that had happened. He examined the area and said, “Wow, that’s strange.” He told me that if he touched the side of my gums near where the tooth was pus would just ooze.

This fact explains why I’ve felt so terrible, and skipped so much guitar, and gone to bed so early and slept until 5 or 5:30 anyway. I have had a massive bacterial infection. I don’t know where it started, but likely entered through the broken tooth.

The choices were: a partial denture, a bridge, or a titanium screw after the extraction. I was probably in the procedure 11-minutes and could feel pressure and hear crunching and tightening, but that was it. Of the three shots, I only felt the one on the side where my gums were infected. He was a gem. The tech took another x-ray and it looks like there is a wall anchor in my jaw.

The surgeon called me yesterday, but I was at the vet with my dog so she could get her allergy shot and other stuff to get her ready for spring. I couldn’t get the call being in the vet’s office. However, it all went well. I went through a lot of gauze yesterday and was generally swallowing some blood, but feel good. I don’t see him until July 26 and my dentist builds an implant on the screw on July 1st. I’m going to get a tooth colored one.

Although I have a wall anchor in my mouth, I’m grateful. Grateful for days off. Grateful for only being responsible for under $1,200 for the nearly $6,000 procedure. I’m also grateful to have this source of infection gone!