I’ve gotten by on Advil, no problems. I can have hot coffee today, and I can help Jane shove furniture around (prep for the garage sale.)
The next appointment is in 3 weeks, to get the stitches out. Then close upon that, a deep cleaning (scaling) on 1/4 of my mouth, to be followed by other such. 3 to 6 months on, given the bone graft was successful, I get an implant to replace the problem tooth. They were able to save 1/3 of the bridge, which is now a crown. So we’re good on that.
Had smoke the last two days, a fire near Spangle, which is downslope from us, so we got it at ground level. Skies are blue today and we hope they got the fire out.
Making progress on the book today, after all the disruption. I don’t think I should go back on the exercise machine for a couple of days.
All’s well, at least. Writing is moving, despite all the interruptions. During this book I’ve had cataract so bad it interfered with focus, many eye exams, two eye surgeries, a trip to Chicago, two root canals, and now this latest, and I can now see what I’m doing and be somewhat confident I have a dentist I can trust, so—all better! But I need to get this book done.
How long after the surgery were you able to eat? I don’t want to disrupt the socket, but 2 pieces of toast for breakfast just isn’t going to carry me through the whole day. Of course, the calories I’ve burned so far today will probably never be missed. 😉
First day, you can have (no straws, because suction can cause bleeding) a spoonfeed malt, etc., ice cream (nothing crunchy, no nuts, no cone); and scrambled eggs (eat on the other side of your mouth); no hot liquids, no carbonated drink. Day 2, nothing crunchy, but anything you can adequately eat on one side of your mouth, avoiding the sore side. You can have hot drinks, etc; sandwiches, but I’d say hold the lettuce or anything you cannot bite neatly. Just nibble and eat carefully. Pasta is good. After that, just eat carefully, keep food away from that side of the mouth, no electric toothbrushes, don’t brush area until healed: 4x a day rinse mouth with 1 tbs salt per cup of water. I lost a pound yesterday…on ice cream and scrambled eggs. Today I’ll gain it back.
pretty much jibes with what they told me as far as treatment, but they didn’t say anything about what I could eat, nor about brushing my teeth….okay, I have a manual tootbrush I can use…..had a dish of ice cream earlier, just plain, chocolate, have vanilla, as well. I can make a malt out of them, too.
Pasta is good. Macaroni you can eat one at a time. Makes dinner last longer. 😉
breakfast this morning was oatmeal (hot), and coffee (hot). No trouble so far, other than intermittent pain through the night. Because we had a line of thunderstorms come through around 11:30PM last night, I was awake, and woke up again at 2:30AM to get another pain pill.
Glad I wasn’t in Indiana, though, they had a whole series of tornadoes from Indianapolis through Kokomo, up toward Ft. Wayne, and on into northwestern Ohio. One storm in Bowling Green, OH, had a report of a wall cloud in addition to the funnel cloud that was spotted.
Since that’s one of my duties as a member of our local Amateur Radio Emergency Service, I monitor storms and if they come into our area, I alert the other members, and we make radio reports on weather conditions at our locations. I take those reports as I get them and relay them to Dayton SKYWARN, who then relays them to the NWS station at Wilmington, OH. Total relay time from spotter to NWS is around 1 minute. If it’s a tornado, you bet we don’t sit on our microphones and wait……a lot of the crawls you see across the bottom of the TV screen are a result of reports like ours.
this morning Sep 3, at breakfast, I accidentally let a piece of cereal over into the other side of my mouth. It didn’t crunch as it was supposed to, and instead, drove down into the socket of the recently-pulled tooth. I was afraid that I’d opened up the gum and made myself open to more bleeding, but no, it’s all right. Just painful when it happened.
Jello!
‘Tis the season for things like gazpacho, which I would personally find delicious and cooling.
Various cooked cereals, like Malt-o-Meal or oatmeal.
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy?
Joe, I use Intermittent Fasting as a way to control my weight, and you can probably do just fine without eating for a day or few. Hunger is temporary, or how would your Hunter-Gatherer ancestors have survived? If you’re hungry, you have to hunt or gather to get food–and you won’t always be successful!
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting
I usually do alternate day, semi-fasting (25% or basal metabolism calories) for 36 hours. Sometimes I wimp–or socialize–out for a day, or go to only 24 hours.
The whole, “I haven’t eaten in 8 hours, so I’m faint!” is more likely dehydration. Diabetics are different, and I expect an unlimited number of other diseases or metabolic variations are, too–I am not a doctor!
I am prone to certain “episodes” where I get really dizzy, weak, irritable, and feel as though I’m going through a blood sugar drop. Let’s see, I’m also anemic…
Mom was diabetic, although I believe that was due to other factors than genetics. I’ve had blood tests done right in the middle of an attack and they can’t find anything wrong. I’ve had a glucose tolerance test, and it came out as me having somewhat low blood sugar. That was 45 years ago, though.
When I lost the 40 pounds a couple of years ago, it was a combination of lack of interest in food, having had a massive veterinarian bill for Birdie (my avatar), and losing her to cancer. After I got used to not eating, it seemed easier to do. I was down to 181 pounds a couple of years ago. I don’t know where I am right now, I don’t have a scale and don’t usually check my weight all that often, anyway.
I do drink a lot of decaffeinated iced tea during the day, although the coffee in the morning is hardly decaf…..well, lots of trips to the bathroom, so at least, I know my kidneys are working. It might be dehydration, as you said.
I have seen diabetics get irritable from a blood sugar drop. They can be really sensitive about it, so I’ve learn to, if possible, grab some bite sized somethings, happen to put them by me toward them, and offer to share as passively as I can. “Eat some of this, you’re being a jerk,” doesn’t seem to have the desired effect. :>
You’re right that after you get used to not eating, it’s quite optional. I’m at something like 24 hours since I last ate, except some tea with a little skim milk and sugar, and I’m kind of, “Well, I should eat something for the protein. Meh.”
Tea and coffee can dehydrate, depending on strength. Yesterday, I was oddly both dehydrated and not thirsty; I was just about falling on my nose from dehydration. Sometimes I try to drink a glass of water before drinking anything that could dehydrate, so: water, tea; water, tea; water, tea.
If you have low or normal blood pressure, there’s no reason not to have a little salt to help you hydrate. More typically than yesterday, I guzzle so much fluid of various kinds that I get a taste for salt.
Particularly if you’re an addict and guzzle decaf iced-tea, caffiene should cause dehydration, though otherwise it can be a diuretic.
[Wikipedia] “Doses of caffeine equivalent to the amount normally found in standard servings of tea, coffee and carbonated soft drinks appear to have no diuretic action. However, acute ingestion of caffeine in large doses (at least 250–300 mg, equivalent to the amount found in 2–3 cups of coffee or 5–8 cups of tea) results in a short-term stimulation of urine output in individuals who have been deprived of caffeine for a period of days or weeks. This increase is due to both a diuresis (increase in water excretion) and a natriuresis (increase in saline excretion); it is mediated via proximal tubular adenosine receptor blockade. The acute increase in urinary output may increase the risk of dehydration. However, chronic users of caffeine develop a tolerance to this effect, and experience no increase in urinary output.”
even though there is a trace amount of caffeine in decaffeinated iced tea, it’s not significant with regards to diuretic qualities. I believe the output of urine is due to the sheer quantities of that decaffeinated liquid ingested, not its caffeine content. Now, the coffee I drink in the morning is NOT decaffeinated, and yes, I drink a LOT of it, my cup holds 14 ounces, I drink 4 cups usually. I do have to make extra trips to the bathroom during the morning. After that coffee is gone, I switch to the iced tea (decaf). I would submit that you would excrete a similar amount if you drank water instead of decaf iced tea.
Poit! Troz! My real reason for posting was…
Proxima b [ᵦ??] is a rocky, terrestrial planet…1.3 times the size of Earth and orbits its star every 11.2 days. … But because its star is much cooler and fainter than our sun, Proxima b has a temperature that is suitable for liquid water to exist on the surface without evaporating.
Researchers estimate that if the planet has an atmosphere, which could be assumed but isn’t known, it may be between 86 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface. Without an atmosphere, it could be -22 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. To put that in perspective, Earth would be -4 degrees if it didn’t have an atmosphere….
Yes!
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/24/health/proxima-b-centauri-rocky-planet-habitable-zone-neighbor-star/index.html
I was discussing the Fermi Paradox (see Wikipedia) with friends recently, and noted that the “robust” volcanology of Earth refined relatively heavy metals (Au, Ag, Fe) to the surface while these would not be available on a more benign world; Io vs. Europa: Io has lots of volcanoes, but is perhaps too “hot” to sustain life; Europa may sustain life, but is, perhaps, too cool to give them the metals for quick (Earth-comparable) technological advancement.
Yeah, perhaps, but get your tinfoil hat out! Proxima Centauri is a known “flare star”. So, it’s a red dwarf, you’re in close to stay warm, but its x-ray output is more or less at Solar levels. Not good for the DNA! 😮
This is great stuff. It might harbor aquatic life, maybe turtle-like tegument… Teenaged Ninja Turtles comes to mind…
What we are seeing is all the SciFi stories that have been written about planets all over the galaxy were closer to the fact than the astronomers were willing to credit. It does seem though that the SciFi authors were much too conservative about the variety of planets, e.g. how many “Hot Jupiters” there are.
And even cool Jovian planets can have a livable world around them. If a Goldilocks moon was between Io (too much energy–Vulcanism) and Europa, life would be better protected from solar flares due to Jupiter’s massive magnetosphere. Ditto, Saturn. At some point you lose photosynthesis, but life can make a living other ways.
“In the last decade and a half, rapid technological advances have opened up the possibility of light-powered space travel at a significant fraction of light speed. This involves a ground-based light beamer pushing ultra-light nanocrafts – miniature space probes attached to lightsails – to speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour [≈15%c]. Such a system would allow a flyby mission to reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years from launch, and beam home images of possible planets, as well as other scientific data such as analysis of magnetic fields.”
–https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3
And new telescopes are being built, including the James Webb Space Telescope (which unfortunately has been looking a lot like the F-35 program). Somewhere in Chanur is a comment that projects go over-time and over-budget throughout the universe. So true.
What happens when the moon is eclipsed by the Jovian planet? 😮
It…gets dark? The orbital periods are at most a few days, so the eclipses would be pretty short, even for a super-Jupiter. For an animal with decent night vision, I expect light passing though the Jovian atmosphere would be a reasonable night light. Of course, since the moons are locked to the Jovian planet and not the Star, they have day and night like Earth.
If the plane of the moons’ rotation is enough different from that of the Jovian planet (tilted), you would have two “seasons” of eclipses between the moons being above or below the Jovian.
And I expect the other moons would be pretty visible. Astronomy would be a lot easier in some ways. For navigation, you might have Jovian and anti-Jovian poles, though I suppose that depends on the importance the culture puts on the star vs. the Jovian. On the Jovian side of the moon, you can always see your latitude by looking at the planet, local weather permitting; on the anti-Jovian side it’s much like celestial navigation on Earth, though the other moons might be a help.
The thing that excites me the most is that suddenly people are seriously dreaming (not at seriously planning stage by far, but still serious) of getting an unmanned probe to the planet.
Yes, it feels like we are about to enter a Sci-fi story. I keep on thinking of Andre Norton’s The Stars are Ours, which I like to think was set in Alpha Centauri, though I haven’t gone back to check.
Ad Astra!!!
Per Aspera!
Ad astera! Nebraskan, much?
I see what you did there 😀
I’m glad you’re doing well. I think I missed your entries about the cataract and I’m facing that surgery soon. I am stunned about it to tell the truth. I’m not a youngster but I never thought I’d get one in my 50’s!! It’s interfering though and it has to go but I am nervous. Could you tell me approximately when you posted about that so I can go back and find it?
From CJ’s January 7, 2016 post “Second Cataract Surgery”:
Quote:
Went well. They use only a topical anaesthetic, no needles on the face, but they do give you an IV, and we had some procedural delays. The first patient’s surgery of the morning took just a few minutes longer than expected, then with mine, they decided they didn’t like the lens they were about to use and went after another, and then that confounded weak blood vessel in my eye that has periodically given me a very red (as in glow in the dark) eye during periods of stress, decided to pop, so they gave me some stuff to stop the bleeding, (unrelated to the lens itself)—which means I only have a third of the eye bright red, and not the whole eye dark red, as usually happens. It seemed the doc’s morning was off to a flying start of two unscheduled problems… but they pronounced the actual lens replacement as really good, no problems.
By the time I’d gotten out I was not quite as steady on my feet as on the first one, and I spent the whole day in bed, zoned out on whatever they’d given me. By evening I waked up. Took all my meds on schedule.
Went in this morning for a post-op check, and all is very well. I can see blues well with both eyes for the first time in years, and I have clear vision with both eyes—once the post-op swelling goes down, it will probably be really excellent with both eyes, and I’ll be able to use over-the-counter glasses for reading and computer work. Still a little red-eyed this morning, but no discomfort. Had a little raw feeling yesterday, but that was the drug they administered to slow down the bleed. THis morning that sensitivity’s gone, and I’m feeling good, if still tired…couldn’t have ANYTHING to do with the last-moment push to get that floor done, oh, not at all…
Unquote.
Just wanted to save her the effort of searching for the post……hope this is what you wanted, EN-ji…..
Yes! Thank you so much for posting it here!
THat was the one where things went sideways a bit, but the first went like clockwork. You don’t feel pain, honestly, and there’s just a moment when they pulverize the original lens (it’s sucked out) that you see only haze and a light source; and that persists for a bit, kind of a curious view of what the world would look like without a lens—and then they slip the new lens in, it unfolds, and zing! the focus is back. A little fuzzy at first, but that improves over the next few days. And the world has its real colors again. I’ve had manicures that hurt worse, quite honestly. The happy juice removes all anxiety, and ‘wide awake and participating—the doc explained to me what they were doing as they were doing it, and it was very interesting’ would be my choice every time. I walked out under my own power, not quite so’s I’d like to have driven home, but I think we went straight out to a local restaurant. Happy juice was still prevailing, so I’m not sure on that detail. But it’s honestly an easy experience, even when (as in my second one) a couple of things go wrong. The result was good.
They will give you a choice of lenses, up close or distance. I told them, I want to see the moon in focus. And I’m convinced that’s the best answer. Being able to walk around in the world is good; and you can slip on a pair of plain reading glasses for close work. But the implants work for television, for conversational distance, for finding Jane at the supermarket, and the moon is in pretty good focus. I chose NOT to get the astigmatism correction, because astigmatism can change over time, and mine is operative only close up and a tiny bit in the driving. So I have prescription glasses for close up.
Thank you, CJ. I feel reassured. My regular eye doctor has me set up with the cataract surgery people in a few weeks for pre-op so you’ve helped me know what to ask them and what to expect. I sort of expected to have this issue but I didn’t expect it for another decade.
@ Empty Nest: My sister had both done a week apart. No problems. She went from 20-400 to 20-20. 😮
I’m glad it went well for her! Thanks for the reassurance.
I’ve had both eyes done and the first was as described: easy peasy.
The second, not so much but not the docs fault. I’d had an operation on that eye 13 years before and the lens was damaged. The surgery lasted 2 1/2 hours and he called for advice in the middle.
OK now.
It’s good to know they are both all right now. Sorry you had the complication the second time.
After some gum grafts a few years ago my periodontist told me to soak the gauze in cold tea before applying to any blood seeping gums. apparently something about the tannin helps the area clot up.
It works – and I tend to spout like Niagara Falls
They told me to wet a tea bag and hold it on with jaw pressure.
No bleeding, in spite of the fact she had to ream out a pit she said was very, scarily close to the main nerve. I saw the x-ray, and it was a very large abscess, nasty, nasty stuff. The abscess was not causing me excruciating pain, I suspect, because it was a root canaled tooth, no nerve in the area, but I’m sure it will improve my general well-being to be rid of it.
When I checked my pillow this morning, there was only a slight tinge of blood, so I presume I didn’t have any problems during the night, at least with bleeding. She did tell me that because the tooth had been broken since March, the gum tissue had started to encroach into the space where the tooth had been located. She trimmed that back, so that might also have contributed somewhat to the bleeding.
I’d be surprised if there weren’t an infection in the socket before she pulled the tooth, it was extremely tender along the gum, and she might have painted the socket with an antibiotic afterward. The dental tech did use an antiseptic rinse afterward, that might also have helped. No other antibiotics, other than the pre-medications they want me to use before any dental procedure because of the implants in my knees and hand. I’ve argued that the ADA doesn’t feel these are necessary, but if I don’t take them, neither the dentist or the endodontist will touch my teeth.
Just some residual pain this afternoon, manageable and tolerable at the moment. So, I’ll be going to dance lessons tonight!
“Whatcha doin’ in your bed? Whatcha doin’ in your bed?
You should be dancin’, yeah!”
I did! I did! Beginner’s class: Cha-cha. Intermediate class: Foxtrot. I’m in the intermediate class, but help with the beginners since there are more women than men who come to learn.
Intermediate class was its usual frustration for me with the last two steps in Foxtrot. Well, it’s progress, because last year, when I took this class, I couldn’t get halfway through the 15 different steps, now I’m up to number 13……patience…
Still somewhat sore today, during the night, I thought I could taste blood, but a check didn’t show any, so I went back to sleep. I’ve stopped taking the heavy painkiller, as it was making me sleepy yesterday afternoon. I don’t have much in the way of OTC stuff, other than naproxen, which isn’t for quick-relief, anyway. Acetiminophen and I get along quite well, but not ibuprofen and I, and my PCM recommends that I don’t use aspirin at the moment. Not even the cardiologist suggested its use, yet.
Weird feeling like the tooth in front of the gap is loose and leaning in toward my tongue. That’s not the case, but it felt like that for a while. Food intake is still restricted, I did have two pieces of toast this morning, but that was it.
The appetite just isn’t there, either. Maybe that’s a result of the hydrocodone.
@Joe – FWIW, I started the baby aspirin on my doctor’s recommendation in my 50’s. But it seems now the recommendation is that around 70 or so the risk for internal bleeding begins to outweigh the risk of clotting complications, i.e. stroke or heart attack, all other things being equal.
At this point they seem to be, for me, so my doctors didn’t argue when I wanted to stop earlier this year. (coincidentally just had a CT angiogram of my carotids, no plaque)
A CT scan of my heart in January showed a very small deposit of soft plaque in an artery that many people don’t have. Don’t remember the name of it, but it’s not in 100% of the population. Anyway, the cardiologist put me on a small dose of Lipitor and Torprol to help stabilize the plaque. She felt that I was in no danger of a heart attack from the plaque, but wanted to stabilize it. My total cholesterol readings as of last physical exam (last August) were really quite exceptional. The only concern was the LDL reading was 71, maximum is 70. The HDL and triglycerides were very good, too. Must be something I eat….. anyway, my last blood donation took exactly 5 minutes, 37 seconds to fill the 1 pint bag, so I’m not sure that I’m pushing thick material through my arteries and veins. At my age (64), I don’t think I’m doing too badly, other than the osteoarthritis issues and of course, the dental woes. But with all of the fillings my teeth have had throughout the years, I’m surprised there’s anything left after all the drilling and filling.
I haven’t agreed to statins yet, @72. Don’t like the side effects. It may yet happen, of necessity! 😉
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