It was the worst of beginnings, it was the best of endings. Waking up early in the morning to go get your teeth drilled is unpleasant enough, but a string of even unpleasanter things befell me before I had even been awake for an hour. First, I could NOT make myself get out of bed on time, due to some really nasty bouts of insomnia that have been plaguing me lately, of which last night's was particularly unrestful. Okay, so I'm running a bit late. I walk out the door after pocketing a key and then realize that I don't have my usual keyring. I'm locked out! And I don't have my car keys. Fortunately, after a minute of stewing and panicking on the front landing, I think hard about which key I DO have in my pocket. It is the spare front door key given to me by my neighbor so I can have a copy made. Saved!
So I let myself in, retrieve my real keys, and off I go, in slightly more of a hurry than when I left the first time. On the freeway, I very nearly rear-end someone while going 55 miles per hour. Holy crap! And it would have been all my fault, too. I was on the onramp to the 8 freeway, which is about 1/2 - 3/4 mile long before you hit actual freeway. I kept trying to get into the leftmost of the two lanes to facilitate merging onto the 8, and then all of a sudden the car in front of me SLAMS on the brakes because the cars in the right lane are pretty much stopped, as they are not trying to get on the freeway but rather to another street that exits off to the right. I brake so hard that my tires screech and my car wobbles. Thank god that I wasn't checking over my left shoulder again at that particular moment. So now my heart is beating at about 200 beats per minute, and I am feeling even less relaxed about my impending drilling session.
Onward I go! However, my mind is in some other place due to the distress I've already encountered thus far in my morning, and I don't notice the exit I'm supposed to be taking until I'm passing it from 3 lanes over. Holy crap!! So I take the next exit, El Cajon Boulevard. They are resurfacing the road there, so there is only one very crowded lane exiting, and I can't turn around to get back on the freeway for 3 whole intersections. And in the early morning, everyone in the world and their brother is trying to get on the 8 east and it is quite crowded, to put it very very mildly. I had glanced at my clock when I got off the freeway, and by the time I get back ON it, it has taken me 15 minutes. Oh my oh my.
Then something happened that made me feel a lot better. A man was waiting next to the crowded onramp with a sign asking for help. I had a dollar. I gave it to him. That made me feel really good. Helping another human being is the best cure for feeling lousy, it truly is. And please don't tell me about how all those homeless folks really aren't homeless and they are just going to use it all for drugs or booze and they make a hundred bucks a day begging. Even if all of those things are true, I really don't care. The act of giving makes me feel good. Even if he is making a fair amount of money per day doing this, he is spending a lot of time near the freeway encountering lots of carcinogenic emissions and unkind stares from drivers. No matter what kind of life he's living, I can guarantee you that the bottom line is that my life is much more comfortable than his, and therefore I feel good about sharing some of my good fortune with him if I can.
Wow. Now I feel much calmer and ready to face my three fillings head-on. Plus, I just called the dentist and they said that the person with the next appointment canceled, so even if I was much much later, it would still be all right. Relief! On the way, driving through Santee (see part 1 for a detailed description) I am sitting at a stop light and I can see out of the corner of my eye that the guy in the large, raised pickup truck next to me is checking me out. A lot. This does not flatter me. It frightens me. I don't dare turn my head for fear that in Santee, making eye contact with a man in a big-ass truck constitutes a civil marriage ceremony or something horrendous like that. Don't look don't look don't look!
I arrive at the dentist safe and unmarried to any local hick-types. Right next to their office is an empty suite with a sign saying, "So-and-so Day Spa Comming soon." Comming? As in dot-comming? Are they opening an online business? Argh! The spelling and grammar nazi in me rears to life. These situations always make me wonder what happened here. Did the people who ordered the sign do so under a "no returns or refunds even if we make horrid spelling errors on your sign" policy and didn't want to spend the extra money on a new one when they noticed the mistake? Or did they send the order to the sign-makers that way and the people making the sign thought, "Well, that's what they ordered. They must want it spelled like that for a reason!" Or did neither party notice the error at all? Hmmmmm. I am very curious, indeed.
Now I am home and the entire left side of my face is numb and drooly. I had to make some business calls about the fundraiser this morning, but put them off until I could speak with relatively little word-slurring so that they wouldn't retract their donations because they thought I was drunk at 9:30 a.m. I am not an animal!!! (movie reference alert) Walking up the steps I noticed a HUGE beautiful type of green spider that I've never seen before clinging to a leaf right next to my staircase. It was gorgeous and amazing and alien-looking. I took a zillion photos which I will post on Flickr as soon as I get more uploading space. Green is my favorite color, and spiders are good luck, didn't you know?
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Inscrutable
Actually, there's nothing remotely mysterious or difficult to understand about this post. I just really wanted to call it Inscrutable because it sounded neat. So, because I haven't yet figured out how to upload photos to my blog without crashing my browser, I have added some new photos to Flickr. Yep! Go check 'em out, kids! There are a few lovely photos of my antic-prone feline and some nifty ones of my recent trip to Albuquerque. I'll elaborate a little more later when I'm not so tired. The Flickr badge is a little ways down on the right side: click on it and away you go.
By the way, have you donated to the fundraiser yet? Hmmmmmm? Read the post for 10-05 and you can learn ALL about it! Don't be the last kid on your block to try it!
ps: Did you notice the mysterious alignment of the repeated word "photos" in the first paragraph? Now, that's spooky! NOW we're getting inscrutable...
By the way, have you donated to the fundraiser yet? Hmmmmmm? Read the post for 10-05 and you can learn ALL about it! Don't be the last kid on your block to try it!
ps: Did you notice the mysterious alignment of the repeated word "photos" in the first paragraph? Now, that's spooky! NOW we're getting inscrutable...
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part two
Ah yes, today was the day--root canal day! I'm glad I got it over with first thing in the morning. My trip into Santee was fairly uneventful--in fact, parts of it were really beautiful. We are having a Santa Ana condition in the San Diego area today, which means that the wind that usually blows in from the cool, wet, ocean, is instead blowing in from over the desert in the east. Meaning that everything is dry and hot, your hair gets all staticky, you shock your cats when you pet them, and this is when things usually start catching on fire. Fortunately, we had some real rain immediately preceding the Santa Anas, so hopefully the brush fires will not get a chance to start burning things yet.
The pretty part of the Santa Anas is that the sky is unbelievably clear--cloudless and cold hard blue. When I first drove north toward Santee today, the early morning sun made deep shadows in the folds of the hills, and everything was draped in a beautiful green-gold light. The leaves on the trees even looked particularly brilliant green and translucent, glowing and flickering in the mild breeze. Lovely!
I did not, however, arrive at my destination without incident. I was nearly run down by a young man in a Giant Expensive Shiny Black Truck. I had just turned a corner to the right, and saw a line of stopped cars in front of me. Naturally, I slowed down. Mr. GESBT Man however, thought that having a green right-turn arrow meant that he shouldn't have to stop for nobody! He's not going to let a line of immobile one-ton metal objects get in his way, no sirree Bob! Ram 'em! At least, he nearly rammed me. I glanced in my rear view mirror as I finished the turn and saw nothing but huge shiny chrome radiator grill. Yikes! I think he felt immediately contrite, because he backed off right away. Or maybe he was just feeling around on the floor for his gun...yeeha!
On to the dentist's office! I regret to inform you that they no longer have "Trailer Life" in their magazine racks. As a consolation, though, they do have Field and Stream, bearing this headline: Best of the Rut! Seven Dates you Must Hunt This Fall! And then: A Million Ducks on the Cheap. Boy, that wildlife out there doesn't stand a chance. Why is Field and Stream called that? Shouldn't it be called Hunt and Kill Every Living Creature? To me, "Field and Stream" implies a sense of appreciation, if not reverence, for natural waterways and landforms and the animals who inhabit them. Just a thought.
The root canal wasn't as bad as all my nervousness promised. They really do try to make you more comfortable these days. They had a television monitor in the ceiling, which at first I was a bit unimpressed by, but then I realized it would be a nice distraction from all of the uncomfortable sensations and noises taking place in my mouth. At least they weren't playing some nasty daytime talk show or infomercial--it was an old black and white movie with lots of misty close-ups of the young actress, tears glimmering from her lower eyelids as she searched her lover's face imploringly. Oh, the drama! Excellent distraction, too. I did actually ask the dentist for a narration of what the heck they were doing to me. What they did is drill a hole into the back of my tooth, and then rout out the place where my tooth nerve was supposed to be, and then extract the dead nerve. Well, since my tooth injury happened such a long time ago, my tooth nerve had receded about halfway up the tooth, and left a path of calcified material in its wake. Apparently, it does this to protect itself; it kind of seals itself up from possible decay in the empty space by filling it up with calcium deposits. Interesting! But that did mean they had to do a lot of extra drilling to get to where the nerve was, dangit. I had to start closing my eyes when they drilled because while it didn't hurt, the vibrations were awful and it was actually making my vision blurry. The doe-eyed actress was looking especially tremulous and upset, and I was feeling a bit queasy watching the room shiver and jiggle like that.
All in all, it was not too bad. I may even decide to get that tooth bleached after all. I've been noticing in recent photos that it's really getting yellower as the years go on. I think it makes all of my other teeth look dingier by comparison. I’ve got a few weeks to contemplate it, at any rate. In the meantime, I need to find work and spend all of my spare time (which I have more of than I'd like right now) making phone calls and trying to raise money. That said, have you checked out my fundraiser yet? Read the previous post, please! I’m not above a little begging. We need money in a most desperate way. That’s right folks. Give us your money or we’ll all stand around you in a circle and threaten to cough phlegm in your general direction. Don’t think we wouldn’t!
The pretty part of the Santa Anas is that the sky is unbelievably clear--cloudless and cold hard blue. When I first drove north toward Santee today, the early morning sun made deep shadows in the folds of the hills, and everything was draped in a beautiful green-gold light. The leaves on the trees even looked particularly brilliant green and translucent, glowing and flickering in the mild breeze. Lovely!
I did not, however, arrive at my destination without incident. I was nearly run down by a young man in a Giant Expensive Shiny Black Truck. I had just turned a corner to the right, and saw a line of stopped cars in front of me. Naturally, I slowed down. Mr. GESBT Man however, thought that having a green right-turn arrow meant that he shouldn't have to stop for nobody! He's not going to let a line of immobile one-ton metal objects get in his way, no sirree Bob! Ram 'em! At least, he nearly rammed me. I glanced in my rear view mirror as I finished the turn and saw nothing but huge shiny chrome radiator grill. Yikes! I think he felt immediately contrite, because he backed off right away. Or maybe he was just feeling around on the floor for his gun...yeeha!
On to the dentist's office! I regret to inform you that they no longer have "Trailer Life" in their magazine racks. As a consolation, though, they do have Field and Stream, bearing this headline: Best of the Rut! Seven Dates you Must Hunt This Fall! And then: A Million Ducks on the Cheap. Boy, that wildlife out there doesn't stand a chance. Why is Field and Stream called that? Shouldn't it be called Hunt and Kill Every Living Creature? To me, "Field and Stream" implies a sense of appreciation, if not reverence, for natural waterways and landforms and the animals who inhabit them. Just a thought.
The root canal wasn't as bad as all my nervousness promised. They really do try to make you more comfortable these days. They had a television monitor in the ceiling, which at first I was a bit unimpressed by, but then I realized it would be a nice distraction from all of the uncomfortable sensations and noises taking place in my mouth. At least they weren't playing some nasty daytime talk show or infomercial--it was an old black and white movie with lots of misty close-ups of the young actress, tears glimmering from her lower eyelids as she searched her lover's face imploringly. Oh, the drama! Excellent distraction, too. I did actually ask the dentist for a narration of what the heck they were doing to me. What they did is drill a hole into the back of my tooth, and then rout out the place where my tooth nerve was supposed to be, and then extract the dead nerve. Well, since my tooth injury happened such a long time ago, my tooth nerve had receded about halfway up the tooth, and left a path of calcified material in its wake. Apparently, it does this to protect itself; it kind of seals itself up from possible decay in the empty space by filling it up with calcium deposits. Interesting! But that did mean they had to do a lot of extra drilling to get to where the nerve was, dangit. I had to start closing my eyes when they drilled because while it didn't hurt, the vibrations were awful and it was actually making my vision blurry. The doe-eyed actress was looking especially tremulous and upset, and I was feeling a bit queasy watching the room shiver and jiggle like that.
All in all, it was not too bad. I may even decide to get that tooth bleached after all. I've been noticing in recent photos that it's really getting yellower as the years go on. I think it makes all of my other teeth look dingier by comparison. I’ve got a few weeks to contemplate it, at any rate. In the meantime, I need to find work and spend all of my spare time (which I have more of than I'd like right now) making phone calls and trying to raise money. That said, have you checked out my fundraiser yet? Read the previous post, please! I’m not above a little begging. We need money in a most desperate way. That’s right folks. Give us your money or we’ll all stand around you in a circle and threaten to cough phlegm in your general direction. Don’t think we wouldn’t!
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Raise Them Funds!
Well, I am sick now, thanks to the ever-slacking cilia in my lungs. It may have started as a cold; I'm really not sure, since it is so hard for me to tell when I actually have one of those due to the fact that it's like having a permanent head and chest cold anyway when your cilia are on a lifelong hiatus. Yeesh! At any rate, I am down for the count, bundling up in sweats now that fall has suddenly pounced upon San Diego, sipping medicinal teas from giant ceramic mugs and spending quality time with my spazzy but affectionate cat. And being sick also provides me with this lovely segue into a plea for donations:
That's right, kids! I really need your help. The PCD Foundation really needs your help. Hundreds of families in the U.S. with sick kids need your help. Truly. Many of you have already received an email about the fundraiser from me, but I humbly ask you to read this post, too.
Here's the scoop: I have PCD (primary ciliary dyskinesia: primary=genetic, ciliary=cilia, dyskinesia=they don't move correctly, if at all), and so does my brother Ken. What this means is that due to some faulty genes, our cilia are malformed and don't work. This is bad because cilia are the body's main defense against airborne crap and other malevolent forces . Meaning that when they work, they move all the nasty inhaled bacteria, dirt, dust, smoke, perfume, etc. out of your lungs and nose. When they don't work, all that stuff just sits in the sinuses and lungs and causes multiple infections and scarring. Every single adult patient I know over the age of 50 is on the list for a lung transplant or has already gotten one. Yeah, that's bad. Cilia are also present in your ears and brain case and in the fallopian tubes. Much havoc ensues. Please PLEASE go to the PCD Foundation link and read more about this!! The link is on the right, and it's also right here:
PCD Foundation: PLEASE READ!
Now, here's what you really need to know: the PCD Foundation (PCDF here on out) is a VERY small nationwide organization, and our goal is to help families of patients with this disorder, to garner research funds, and to increase awareness within the medical community. This is a very rare condition, so hardly anything concrete is known about it. Many families with young just-diagnosed children feel completely lost, and they turn to us for help. PCDF has a patient education weekend once a year, where physicians and researchers donate their time to give talks on what we have discovered about the disease thus far. It is extraordinarily helpful to patients, and provides a meeting place for interested medical personnel as well.
The PCDF lost its only corporate sponsor a while ago, and the only way we currently have to generate funds is through small fundraisers put on by individuals around the country. We need to raise $30,000 this year in order to be able to survive as an organization. I am putting on a fundraising walk in San Diego and my goal is to raise $4,000. This is a lot! And I absolutely CANNOT do it without the help of you fine folks. Everybody I have spoken to lately is willing to donate, and that is wonderful. But I can't raise $4000 on my own from donations. Only TWO people have promised to walk with me for the fundraiser. This is just not enough! What I really need for you to do if you live in the San Diego area, is to commit to attending the PCD Spooky walk as a registered walker. As such, you will get to walk around beautiful Lake Miramar on October 29th and show off your Halloween costume AND get people to pledge to give you money for the PCDF. All you need to do is to email me at pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (take the spaces out; I put those there to deter spam harvester thingies). I will email you everything you need to know about how to walk and get pledges from folks. It's really a lot easier than you think! If you ask 5 people for only $10 each, then you'll generate $50 for the PCDF! Easy! You have 5 friends and relatives, I'm sure.
If you live outside the area, you can still help. You can donate online! How easy is that? Go to the PCDF website and click on the "Donate Now" link on the left side of the page. We have a paypal account. If you don't have one, fear not--you can use a credit card. Please put (this is important) "San Diego Walk" in the comment box so we know that's where to credit the funds. Please donate as much as you can and as much as will make you feel good.
I know you are all busy people. I know that everybody else wants your money, too. But we are a struggling organization in desperate need of your help. Even if you can only give $5, that helps! Five bucks! That's $5 more than nothing. No donation is too small to be appreciated.
And remember, if you live here, please get some pledges and come walk with me! I really need the support. Did I mention that there will be free beer? Yeah, BEER! pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (again, take out those spaces)
Thanks so much for your valuable time and attention, my friends. I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me on a very personal level when people help us out.
That's right, kids! I really need your help. The PCD Foundation really needs your help. Hundreds of families in the U.S. with sick kids need your help. Truly. Many of you have already received an email about the fundraiser from me, but I humbly ask you to read this post, too.
Here's the scoop: I have PCD (primary ciliary dyskinesia: primary=genetic, ciliary=cilia, dyskinesia=they don't move correctly, if at all), and so does my brother Ken. What this means is that due to some faulty genes, our cilia are malformed and don't work. This is bad because cilia are the body's main defense against airborne crap and other malevolent forces . Meaning that when they work, they move all the nasty inhaled bacteria, dirt, dust, smoke, perfume, etc. out of your lungs and nose. When they don't work, all that stuff just sits in the sinuses and lungs and causes multiple infections and scarring. Every single adult patient I know over the age of 50 is on the list for a lung transplant or has already gotten one. Yeah, that's bad. Cilia are also present in your ears and brain case and in the fallopian tubes. Much havoc ensues. Please PLEASE go to the PCD Foundation link and read more about this!! The link is on the right, and it's also right here:
Now, here's what you really need to know: the PCD Foundation (PCDF here on out) is a VERY small nationwide organization, and our goal is to help families of patients with this disorder, to garner research funds, and to increase awareness within the medical community. This is a very rare condition, so hardly anything concrete is known about it. Many families with young just-diagnosed children feel completely lost, and they turn to us for help. PCDF has a patient education weekend once a year, where physicians and researchers donate their time to give talks on what we have discovered about the disease thus far. It is extraordinarily helpful to patients, and provides a meeting place for interested medical personnel as well.
The PCDF lost its only corporate sponsor a while ago, and the only way we currently have to generate funds is through small fundraisers put on by individuals around the country. We need to raise $30,000 this year in order to be able to survive as an organization. I am putting on a fundraising walk in San Diego and my goal is to raise $4,000. This is a lot! And I absolutely CANNOT do it without the help of you fine folks. Everybody I have spoken to lately is willing to donate, and that is wonderful. But I can't raise $4000 on my own from donations. Only TWO people have promised to walk with me for the fundraiser. This is just not enough! What I really need for you to do if you live in the San Diego area, is to commit to attending the PCD Spooky walk as a registered walker. As such, you will get to walk around beautiful Lake Miramar on October 29th and show off your Halloween costume AND get people to pledge to give you money for the PCDF. All you need to do is to email me at pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (take the spaces out; I put those there to deter spam harvester thingies). I will email you everything you need to know about how to walk and get pledges from folks. It's really a lot easier than you think! If you ask 5 people for only $10 each, then you'll generate $50 for the PCDF! Easy! You have 5 friends and relatives, I'm sure.
If you live outside the area, you can still help. You can donate online! How easy is that? Go to the PCDF website and click on the "Donate Now" link on the left side of the page. We have a paypal account. If you don't have one, fear not--you can use a credit card. Please put (this is important) "San Diego Walk" in the comment box so we know that's where to credit the funds. Please donate as much as you can and as much as will make you feel good.
I know you are all busy people. I know that everybody else wants your money, too. But we are a struggling organization in desperate need of your help. Even if you can only give $5, that helps! Five bucks! That's $5 more than nothing. No donation is too small to be appreciated.
And remember, if you live here, please get some pledges and come walk with me! I really need the support. Did I mention that there will be free beer? Yeah, BEER! pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (again, take out those spaces)
Thanks so much for your valuable time and attention, my friends. I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me on a very personal level when people help us out.
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