Friday – ARGH!!!!

Last Friday was a challenging ordeal. It began at about 2:00 a.m. when I woke up with the whole right side of my heard throbbing in pain. The root cause (literally) of this discomfort being a tooth that had a filling several weeks before. The dentist mentioned at the time that he had barely hit the root and that if there were problems with it, I might need a root canal. I was having a sinking feeling that a root canal was in my immediate future.

I drug myself out of bed at about 5 a.m. took a shower and got ready for work. On the way to the park and ride I stopped at Safeway to pick up some aspirin, because the only thing I had at home was Advil PM. That wasn’t going to get through the day.

While I was there I picked up a hot chocolate at the Starbucks, I couldn’t eat anything and thought the milk would help my stomach. Anything cold was out of the questions since the cold would only aggravate my tooth more, it possible. It took forever since the two people working were doing more conversing than cranking out the hot stuff. It felt like I stood in line forever, but it probably wasn’t all that long, it just felt like it.

On to the park and ride where I got the bus driver from Hell. He decided to cop a total attitude with me. Not the morning for that and we got into it bit. I did make a complaint to the local bus company when I got into the office, but I still haven’t heard back.

Into the office to wait until I can call my dental provider for an emergency appointment. Interestingly, my provided informed me I could be seen as an emergency but it would cost an extra $20. Really? I of course agreed, it’s not like I could wait weeks to be seen. I did point out that if the dentist hadn’t nicked my root doing the filling I wouldn’t need an appointment. The customer service person suggested I mention that when I paid my bill. That turned out to be good advice. Goes to show you should poke at every corner.

I madly bang away at work to get a mailing out the door before I have to leave for my appointment. Got out just at the last possible moment.

Dentist informs me that yes I have a bad tooth and will need a root canal. Now here’s the deal, I have really good teeth, but bad plack so I need deep cleanings three times a year by a periodontal hygienist. Think root scraping, and an hour in the chair. I’ve heard all the worst stories about root canals: 8 hours in the chair, horrible pain, failed procedures. I told the dentist all this and let her know I didn’t think I could sit in a chair for hours, and then have to have the tooth pulled later. She really listened and agreed to pull the tooth, but wanted me to give it a try and she would stop at any time and do the extraction. I agreed, reluctantly. Aside from the one shot in the roof of my mouth it was amazingly pain free, and it took just under an hour. Of course this was just the first half of the procedure. The will finish it next month.

Of course by the time the dentist is through the pain is already starting to come back. I go out and wait to be called to pay my bill and my medical reimbursement payment card wouldn’t go through, so I had to pay out of pocket. I then head over to the pharmacy with my prescriptions, one for a pain killer and one for antibiotic. And the payment card still isn’t working so more out of pocket money. I pop those puppies as soon as I get them and head home and into bed. I hit the sheets a little after 2:00 p.m. and slept like the dead for 6 hours when the pain killer wore off. More antibiotics and pain killers, and back to bed.

I was never so glad to see a day end, at least not in recent memory.

Where Are We Centered?

I was listening to NPR (OPB-Oregon Public Broadcasting) the other day, no shocker there since I usually listen to NPR whenever I’m in the car and in the mornings when I’m getting ready for work. The host was interviewing an author about his new book on maps. One of the points the author made was that over the centuries maps have been centered relative to what the maker or user felt was most important. So it might be Rhodes which was the center of trade a really long time ago, or Jerusalem for obvious reasons.


So this gets me to thinking. It’s no wonder so many people act like they’re the center of the universe, they’ve been using their GPS! As soon as they pull up the GPS what does it show you? Where you are, and where are you? In the center.

I think we need to come up with a new center. But what should we center on? Not Hollywood, not New York, or London, or Tokyo, or Hong Kong or any other of the world capitals or centers of business and money. We need a center that focuses us on a wider view, one that focuses us on something apart, but something we want to care about. So we need an app! (I can’t believe I’m saying that.) We need an app that allows us to center our GPS on something like the neighborhood school, the community garden, animal shelter, or food bank. We’ll call it TrueCenter.