Blog: Articles filed under health

I’m still alive.¹

Actually, when all is said and done, the wisdom teeth extraction was Not That Bad. I went in, the assistant hooked me up to various Machines That Go Ping!, gave me some nitrous oxide to relax, then stuck me with an IV. I drifted off to neverneverland. The next thing I know, the assistant is asking me to come lie down on a bed in a little recovery room. I do so and start to read my book. In about five minutes I‘m fully lucid and feeling quite well.

I won’t rub it in, but I had no swelling, no bruising, and no pain. I took a couple of painkillers on Friday but kicked them after Saturday morning. I had pizza—in small bites—for dinner on Friday, although I stuck with yogurt, Jello, and very soft food until Tuesday. My jaw feels a bit different when I chew, but overall it was a painless procedure.² All that trepidation….

These past few weeks—I‘d like to say almost all of May as well, but I don’t want to be melodramatic here—have been draining. Or maybe it’s just that today was draining and I’m projecting. Nevertheless, the jumbled sequence of one-off events and above-average activity has left me breathless and tired. I need a vacation, but that was my vacation. Next week I start working full time. Yay.

While I could digress now and talk about how I‘m not all that enthusiastic about working full time this summer, there would be no point. It’s going to happen. And my job isn’t bad at all—I just find it difficult to spend eight hours there, especially on the slow days. So I‘m going to focus on the positives. There’s the money, of course. My fellow front desk attendants are nice people, and I’m essentially being paid to hang out with one of them for eight hours.³

Aside from the money, the other big advantage is that I’ll finally have a schedule again. Now, I’m not a creature of routine. My daily routine has constants, true, but I often vary most of my activities. I am, however, a creature of habit. Hence, May and early June’s dense schedule of stress has played havoc with my habits. Even though working full-time eats up my free time, it at least means I can stop worrying that I’ll be asked to work a bingo or take on three extra shifts at the end of the week….

I’m also feeling creatively unfocused as of late. I have plenty of projects on the go, some of which are in danger of becoming brain crack. Every time I try to sit down and work on one, however, my mind turns to the other projects, and I find it hard to accomplish anything. Even writing blog posts feels lacks lustre; I‘ve some ideas for potential posts but very little desire to actually compose them. This isn’t an “I Suck” phase (thankfully) but a “Why Bother?” phase, and my apathy is beginning to annoy me.

Additionally, I seem to be stuck in a passive-receptive mode when it comes to information. There’s an incredible amount of amazing and cool stuff happening in the world outside the Box That Is My Room. So much so that all I can do is absorb it osmotically. My feed subscriptions push hundreds of articles at me, and Twitter and Facebook push a myriad of other interesting items in my direction. It’s not information overload though. I don’t fanatically check my feeds; I read them once or twice a day. Other people just seem to be producing so much, it only strengthens my apathy toward creating my own things. And that’s just a wrong-headed idea, and I know it’s a wrong-headed idea, and I am severely disappointed in myself.⁴

About the only thing that pushes my buttons right now is reading (as always). I had to order a couple of books for birthday presents, so I took the opportunity to order everything that was in my Chapters shopping cart, even though I still have plenty of books waiting from my last trip to Chapters! And naturally, I had to buy duplicates when I didn’t own the book I was giving away…. Anyway, I placed the order on Sunday, and the first part arrived on Wednesday. I love Chapters.

Of course, there’s so many books I read and not enough time in which to read them! I’m coming across more and more interesting books that I mark as to-read; it’s staggering. Thus I feel a soul-wrenching, pent-up desire to devour literature at an awesome and terrifying rate. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

I’ve always been an avid reader, but over the past couple of years my passion has only intensified. Part of this is due to Goodreads, of course, but it’s not the sole culprit. I’m not sure why else though. Maybe as I‘ve matured, I’ve started to pursue my interests in a more organized, systematic fashion (and Goodreads facilitates this for my reading). As a result, knowing that I have a plan, knowing that there’s all these books I want to read now, makes me more eager to read as much as possible. Maybe I’ve always been this crazy and my friends were just too afraid to tell me, lest I murder them in their sleep by inflicting a thousand tiny papercuts. I’d never do that, of course!⁵

Suggestions for how to focus my creativity are welcome, but I’m not interested in GTD evangelization here. My projects are not to-do style endeavours—although I have tried keeping track of them with to-do lists. Aim more toward the area around reconciling your desire to devote time to creating stuff with your desire to drink prodigious amounts of tea while reading books by the truckload.⁶

• [ 1 ] Although chances are equally good I’m just a component of a massive set of equations which we happen to perceive as the Universe.
• [ 2 ] Aside from the part where I give them a substantial chunk of money, of course.
• [ 3 ] It’s dangerous to get into that mindset, though. I’m actually being paid to work, not socialize.
• [ 4 ] Bad Ben! Don’t make me use the newspaper!
• [ 5 ] I’d hire ninjas to inflict the thousand tiny papercuts.
• [ 6 ] If someone ever installs vending machines that serve “tea and a book”, I will be doomed.

I have previously talked about how amazing I consider the human body, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Yesterday, a 14-year-old girl finally left the hospital after living for four months on an artificial heart.

This event reminded me how amazing the heart is. Your heart is the one muscle in your body that, if you are lucky, never takes a break for your entire life. It keeps pumping, whether you are awake or asleep. It works harder to get you up the stairs or to help you see a marathon through to the end. Yet some people—people who have healthy hearts free of unavoidable defects—reward this hard-working muscle with a megadose of calories and cholesterol in the form of unhealthy foods (particularly fast foods).

I‘m not trying to pontificate about the evils of fast food here. I love eating burgers! This is just a friendly reminder that, if you haven’t thought about it lately, think about your heart now.

Your heart is important! Love it, and it’ll last just as long as you! (Which is kind of the idea.)

Yesterday I had a consultation with an oral surgeon regarding the possible extraction of my wisdom teeth. Why possible? Well, I’m not sure if I need it—or if I want to do it.

My wisdom teeth have fully grown into my mouth and don’t cause me any pain, unlike some people, so I count myself lucky in that regard. Nevertheless, both my dentist and my oral surgeon have recommended I get them removed. There are some compelling reasons to do this. Firstly, it’s possible they’ll crowd my jaw in painful ways in the future (I didn’t really follow this part of the discussion, so I’m not sure if they are crowding my jaw right now or not). Secondly, if I ever need to get jaw surgery, my wisdom teeth will have to be removed anyway. Lastly, the teeth do make it harder for me to brush and floss, which can lead to oral hygiene complications—I already have a cavity in one wisdom tooth.

So with all of this compelling data, why am I ambivalent? To put it simply, I don’t like the idea of surgery. I’ve never had surgery before, and I‘d rather avoid it unless it’s really necessary. The idea of removing parts of my body—even if they’re vestigial teeth—seems weird to me. Plus, no matter how safe a surgery is, there can always be complications. If the choice is between having wisdom teeth that aren’t causing problems and having surgery that could cause problems, which choice makes more sense? I can just as easily get my cavity filled and try to improve my oral hygiene habits. So the question might very well be: even if my wisdom teeth aren’t causing me problems now, will they in the future?

I tried to ask intelligent questions of my oral surgeon, but he disarmed me with his bedside manner. The receptionist urged me to book my surgery while I was there, before the summer schedule filled up. Lot of car salespeople they are! And really … even if I did ask my oral surgeon, can I trust that his opinion is unbiased? After all, he has a vested interest in getting me to go through the surgery so he can get money (and who can blame him—he has a family to support, and in this case the surgery is relatively harmless, so it’s not like he’s bootlegging organs). This is a problem I have with medicine in general: it is one of those things in life where only those initiated into its secrets can understand the complexities involved and make an informed decision. As a person who tries to make rational, informed decisions whenever possible, how can I choose when I don’t have the information? Who do I trust when the only people with the information—medical professionals—may not be reliable sources of information? I can do research on the Internet, but ultimately I’ll have to make some judgement calls.

To summarize, I’m not concerned about the surgery process itself—I‘m uncomfortable with surgery from an ideological perspective, but if I do decide to go through with it, that’s fine. I’m just not sure if I want to get rid of four teeth. I never thought that I could make such a big deal out of this decision—I figured I‘d go in, get ’em out, and recover. I didn’t expect to enter into such inner conflict as I am experiencing now. Funny how life does that, eh?

The election ads are back.

On another note, I‘ve felt sick since yesterday, which is no fun. I won’t go into details, but let’s put it this way: I can now use the words “reverse peristalsis” in context. Luckily my family is very practised at taking care of each other. My brother made me toast last night.

Ugh, but I’ve had to stay home from work … which means I’ll probably have to work on Thursday (assuming I work tomorrow). The holidays have been way too short.

I had to go to the dentist today. *waits for all the sympathetic hugs to pour in.*

Thanks. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it could be; I don’t have any cavities. But I do need to brush better and floss more. I know this, and I have no good excuse for not having shiny white teeth. It just doesn’t happen that way.

I can never decide which is worse: the tooth polishing or the fluoride treatment. Both are sickening, which is unfortunate, because I have a very sensitive gag reflex.

Let’s see … I should get to see my midsemester report card tomorrow and fill out a response form. The actual report card is en route to my house via mail, and we all know how slow the Canada Post can be… . I hate filling out that response form. It always asks me to list achievements, and I honestly feel terrible listing any sort of achievement. Yeah, I’m weird.

I went to the orthodontist today, first time for everything. Apparently I have an underbite, which occurs where my lower jaw protrudes out from my face slightly more than my lower jaw. Mine is very slight, only about a millimetre, so apparently it isn’t much to worry about yet. The treatment would be jaw surgery in which a portion of my lower jaw is cut, removed, and then the remainer is slid back to correct the profile. I would have to wear braces for about a year prior to the surgery, then about six months after. I’m too young to have the surgery done, however, it would have to be done once I stop growing, so they are going to call me back in about a year to see how my underbite fares. If it doesn’t get worse and I’m happy with it, I don’t need to get the surgery; this is good, I don’t like the idea of surgery… .