Food dudette

On thishereblog post, I am going to talk about food. 

I've lost 20 pounds since November, mostly due to dental work, a retainer that I hate wearing, and not eating in public spaces or around people because of said dental work and retainer. 

I'm all about the weight loss, but I think it needs to be done in a healthy way. I don't know that losing a front tooth and having to take nausea medication to wear a retainer is the healthiest of ways that weight could have come off, but it is what it is and here we are five months and 20 pounds later.

That being said, I've been trying to eat more. 

Last night, I made honey garlic lemon salmon, rice and veggies. This morning I woke up like a true geriatric millennial and had avocado toast. 

Here is the recipe for the salmon that I found on Tik Tok. The recipe for the toast is as follows: Smush an avocado with salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes and lemon or lime juice, spread that magic on a piece of toast, top with cherry or grape tomatoes that are cut in half.

And that's it, kids. The salmon is one of the best things that I've ever cooked. One minor adjustment I would make is to substitute lemon juice for orange juice. I am not a chef or even that good of a cook, I just think orange would taste better.

Maybe?

Anyway, all is well in Monicaland at the moment. I'm trying to cook more, drink more water, see my family and the kids more, and just do everything in general more these days. 

I don't want to brag, I don't want to boast. I always tell them, I like toast. Toast!

One of the best things I've ever cooked. I ate every single bite of this salmon. 

Late December happenings

I haven't written in a while, but that's because there's not a whole lot going on in Monicaland at the moment.

My tooth healed nicely — well, my tooth extraction, that is. After it healed and I looked at it, I realized that the implant is visible in my gums, which is pretty cool. I'm shocked at how much seeing that little piece of metal helps my mental health.

I've not cried one single time since it was removed. I can see that little piece of metal, which means it's going to be fixed soon. 

My next appointment with the oral surgeon is at the end of March. Until then, I have to shut up and heal. Both of those things are more difficult than you might imagine. 

Until next year! 

"You're an older, toothless gal, aren't you?"

Penny Pug is sick this week and taking antibiotics. 

Penny Pug, also known as Pig to her close circle of family and friends, is 13 years old. She's living out her best retired life by receiving Pickles kisses all day and by fighting with Raven day and night.

I took Penny to the doctor this week, and the doctor is a very nice lady that Penny and I both like a lot.

The doctor walked into our treatment room, greeted both of us, and then said: "You're an older, toothless gal, aren't you?"

I kept my mouth shut and didn't say much, but in the moment, I wasn't sure whether she was talking to me or Penny. 

She was talking about Penny.

(For what it's worth, I was wearing my retainer with my fake tooth in it.) 

"It's normal for you."

About 10 years ago, I sat through a root canal on my front tooth. I've always been hard to numb in front, and I sat there for what seemed like forever.

Was it 20 minutes? Or 30 minutes? An hour? I'm not really sure. All I know is that the specialist breathed a sigh of relief and said that he was glad that was over with. I sat up, and went to grab my purse, pay and leave.

The specialist stopped me and asked me what I was doing.

It turns out the root canal had not even started yet, he was just done getting me completely numb in front. The process of numbing me took so long that I thought it was the entire appointment.

I asked the root canal specialist if that was normal.

His response: "It's normal for you."

On Halloween one year, I had two root canals done at the same time. The same specialist didn't tell me he was going to do two that day. In his words: "I made the best decision for your health, regardless of money."

And now, 10 years later, I no longer have those teeth that got fixed on Halloween, and I'm going to lose the tooth in front that was hard to numb.

This is going to be a woe is me post, but this is my blog and I can whine if I want to.

There are things I did not know about dental work when I was younger. I didn't know that dental work doesn't work sometimes. I didn't know that when you do a root canal, gum surgery and crown a tooth, you can still lose that tooth, which means you have to spend between $4,000 and $5,000 on an implant on a tooth you already spent $3,000 trying to fix. 

And by the way, when dental work doesn't work, no one really cares. You don't get apologies from your previous dentist or specialist. 

You don't get anything except more physical pain.

Six years ago, my health started to decline. I lost a bunch of weight and I was worried for my life. I didn't recognize it as a toothache right away because my dentist back home told me I didn't have any problems. 

I went to a surgeon to try to get my gallbladder taken out. I had another minor surgery, trying to figure out what the problem was. 

The problem was a tooth. That tooth, part of a bridge, broke above my gum line and when it got infected, the infection went to my jaw bone.

I lost a $7,000 bridge and I spent $10,000 fixing it. 

I put off buying a house when it happened. I canceled a vacation I wanted to take. I took a loan out on my car that was already paid off to pay for it. 

--

I went to a new dentist this week, a young one just out of school by a few years. These visits never go well for me, and I'm not sure why I even try anymore. 

This new guy was nice enough, and I tried to be nice back. He looked at my x-rays, noted how many root canals I've had (too bad x-rays don't show how many teeth I've had two root canals on), and he leaned in pretty close to me.

He said: "Oh my God. What happened?"

Dude, I thought, you should have been there when it happened. Imagine how I feel right now.

(I ended up at my tried-and-true dentist in nearby big city a day later, who treated me with kindness and respect, as they always do there.)

You don't remember the time I went to the emergency room three times in one week because I couldn't take the pain (infected jaw bone incident). You don't remember the time I got a pain shot in front of my best friend in the ER in a not safe for work location on my body. (Are you really best friends with someone if you haven't seen them naked?)

I left that appointment a couple of days ago and waited until I was in my car to cry. On Tuesday night, I put an ice cube over my eyes to try to reduce the swelling from crying so much.

It turns out that I'm going to do the implant thing again. 

I don't have much of a choice and right now, I'm going to take the time to be mad that life is unfair.

--

So, what the hell happened to my teeth?

A series of unfortunate events, coupled with depression when I was younger. There was a piece of cotton left in one tooth after a root canal that was supposed to be taken out, but wasn't. I lost that tooth. There was a broken instrument in another tooth that was left after a root canal that I wasn't told about.

My specialist who broke the news to me: "This really pisses me off."

I thought to myself at the time: Dude, try living through it. Imagine how pissed off I am that foreign objects were left in my body without my permission.

The thing that sucks about having bad teeth is that I don't know another person my age who's had a single root canal, let alone as many as I have (11 on nine teeth). I don't know another person my age who has implants and has lost teeth.

I have no one to go to for advice. I have to rely on myself for that, and only I know what I can and can't tolerate.

I set a goal for myself 10 years ago when I started going through the worst of it, and I think those goals are still accurate today. They are:

• I want to smile and not feel embarrassed about it. 

• I want to chew food.

• I want to live without pain.

The question now is how much more of this can I possibly take. My current dilemma is not dire, and it will be fixed with an extraction via an oral surgeon and hopefully an implant.

The fact that it's a front tooth doesn't even bother me. I'm way past the point of being vain about this. I'm past being embarrassed about the state of my teeth. 

You don't really get to complain about a front tooth getting extracted when you've almost died in the past because of your teeth (jaw bone incident).

So, why am I complaining about this? Why am I writing about this?

I don't really know.

Let's normalize going through hard and painful things. Let's just admit that life sucks sometimes and there are times that you have to make the least possible sucky decision out of a few decisions, all of which cause pain and misery.

Also, there's a list of things I really don't like being said to me. 

Among them:

• "If you keep going to the dentist, they'll keep finding things wrong. Stop going." Thanks for that advice. I would die if I did this.

• "Get them all pulled." Chop off one of your body parts, a leg or an arm. Just do it and see if you're all sunshine and roses afterward. 

• "Are you still going through that? Aren't your problems fixed by now?" My favorite way to respond to dumb people: Thank you for sharing that.

The amount of money I have invested in my mouth at this point is astronomical. If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. I could pay for 50 trips across the country and back; I could pay off my student loans, twice over; I could pay for 250 Eric Church concert tickets (and I wish I could); and at this point, there's probably a Tesla in my mouth. 

And it's still not over?

What do you do when you go through hard stuff and have no one to go to for advice? The answer: The only way out is through — with a really, really sore mouth.

Life goes on, if you let it.

I've learned several important life lessons over the past few years.

The newest one: Don't finance something you don't want to think about every month.

I bought a car in 2009. I paid it off in a few years, and I was pretty proud to drive a car that was paid off. My intention was to drive that car into the ground.

But then I had a huge tooth problem. I fixed the same three teeth not once, not twice, but three times, at a cost of $17,000.

A $7,000 bridge failed, an infection ate my jaw bone, I cried, I met a cool oral surgeon in Wichita and I spent $10,000 on implants.

When this $17,000 disaster happened, I realized I had to give up a few things. I couldn't get a new car like I planned three years ago and all of my house projects stopped.

My world basically stopped until I paid off that dental work. I took out a loan and used my car, which had more than 157,000 miles on it, as collateral.

It was not an ideal situation. An oral surgeon had to take the teeth out, not a regular dentist, so the surgeon might as well do the bone grafts too while he's up there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I invested that money in my mouth. Getting implants is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

But I hated making that loan payment. Every month, I went through a cycle where I got really, really mad. Every month I'd think about what I went through, how many doctors I went through and how many pointless surgeries I endured for teeth that I ended up losing anyway.

I lost teeth that had five root canals, two gum surgeries, two crowns, an extraction and a bridge.

All of that work, all of that money, all of that time and all of that pain was for absolutely no reason.

But life goes on, if you let it. That was a few years ago and that loan amount has been dwindling.

At my last dental appointment, my doctor told me that I have no cracked teeth, no infections, and no major problems. We could talk about tooth whitening if I wanted to, he told me.

I've come a long way.

All is well on the tooth front right now, they told me. They said I could relax and not worry about infection eating bone in my face again.

--

Penny and I have been driving past cars recently. I found one I liked in town, and it was the first time that I actually got out of my car and snooped around in Toyota's parking lot.

And then that car disappeared off the lot overnight.

They sold my car!

I decided that it was time for new wheels. It's time to get rid of the tooth loan and start making payments on a shiny new thing sitting in front of my house (because it doesn't fit in my garage, haha).

I hated getting pissed off every month when I made that payment that went towards my mouth.

(And before anyone lectures me: Yes, I realize I should have paid cash for all of this. But does anyone really expect a $7,000 worth of dental work to fail after a year? Does anyone really plan on spending $17,000 on three teeth? I don't feel bad about getting a loan for this because no one has that much money sitting around for teeth.)

It's just time to move on and quit thinking about teeth.

It's time for new wheels.

My little niece was the first person to ride in my new car. She's 5, and she's the best kid ever (along with her sisters.)

She decided that my new car is a rainbow car.

I'll take it.

I don't like doing this stuff on my own. I don't like buying cars or sales people and cell phone companies and window companies that knock on my door.

But I didn't really have a choice, so I (figuratively) gritted my teeth for a few hours at the dealership until the car was MINE!

As they handed me the keys and I was walking out the door, Ashley McBryde started playing on the radio. And no, I'm not lying about this.

It was a perfect end to the perfect saga in my life.

Not bad for a girl goin' nowhere.

"Don't touch me. I'm broken."

I have a hard time with dental appointments.

When I had a cleaning on Monday this week, the hygienist and dentist asked me if I knew I had a cracked tooth.

They started talking, and I started to lose it.

My dentist quickly realized this, and put her hand on my shoulder.

"It's just a crown," she said. "No implants or extractions or bone grafts or oral surgeons this time."

Oh. Just a crown? Not even a root canal to go along with that?

I can live with that.

I went back on Wednesday for my first crown appointment. When I sat down in the chair to look at the pretty view of the pond, I read a post-it note that was hanging from the blinds.

It said: "Don't touch me. I'm broken."

I sympathized with that post-it note, and I almost took it.

Don't worry, post-it note. I'm broken, too.

Literally, I'm broken...my tooth that I had fixed on Wednesday fell out of my mouth on Thursday.

Want to see it? It's pretty cute.

I get the permanent crown next week, so this little dude is just going to hang out with me in my office until then.

---

Comment from everyone at my dental office: "I forgot you have the world's tiniest mouth."

Thanks?

On things breaking

A part that I had replaced on my car six months ago broke the other day.

As a result, I could not shut my car door. 

College did not teach me what to do when your car door will not shut. 

This is a story about how life doesn't always go as planned. This is also a story about how you just have to roll with it sometimes.

-----

Nine days ago, I bug bombed my house. I cannot hire a big fancy company to bug bomb my house because I just paid a big fancy company to give me teeth.

Priorities, people. 

I spent a whopping $5 on a DIY bug killing kit, and I asked my Dad for some help early(ish) on a Saturday morning.

Killing bugs apparently involves turning off your pilot lights, which for me, means my hot water heater.

For the record, I was told to not mess with the pilot light. Also for the record, I didn't listen.

That night, everything was fine. My bath was hot and my house was bug free.

Life was good. 

On Sunday morning when I woke up, I had no hot water. None, whatsoever, not even an ounce of it. 

I did what any adult woman would do in this situation...I called Dad.

One trip to the store and a lit pilot light later, I had hot water. 

The next day, nadda. I had ice cold water.

Like I whined to my Dad: Why do you need an appliance to heat your water? Hot water heaters are the most inefficient things ever. Why isn't the water just naturally hot? This is the dumbest thing ever to spend money on.

The men in my life gave me that 'you're an idiot' look, and then said something like, Hey, stupid. Water comes from the ground and it's not usually hot when it does that.

Whatever, men. 

I had the privilege of of showering at my Mom and Dad's house that week. Because every adult woman does that, right? 

I bought a new hot water heater and my Dad came over on Saturday to install it. I woke up to my house smelling like gas, and I noped out of there so hard I could not have noped harder. 

I chewed all of my nails off that day. 

You guys, I have a new, shiny, brand-spankin'-new hot water heater. I think he looks like a Frank, so that's officially his name.

He's a sexy beast, that Frank.

tl;dr: I saved $100 by bug bombing my house by myself and then spent almost $500 on a new hot water header. And that part in my car is still broken. 

Part 1

Interesting things about oral surgery, medications and anxiety, part 1:

1. My right arm hurt today, and I didn’t know why. I have two punctures on my right arm, which is fine, but my dentist took blood from my left arm. They tried my right arm, and I don’t even remember them doing that. Anxiety is awesome like that.
2. Dentists take blood now? That’s a first for me.
3. I’m about ready to itch my skin off. Side effect of antibiotics, I guess? Wearing clothes that are 100 percent cotton helps. Weird.
4. I have stitches on both sides of my mouth. Every time my face touches something, like a pillow or a make-up brush, it hurts.
5. Being in cold weather makes it feel like someone is taking a baseball bat to my face.
6. I have to eat food to take medicine, but I can’t chew on either side of my mouth. What?
7. I had to drink a lot of water before the surgery because they told me to be nice and hydrated when I got my blood taken. Thankfully I learned how to drink really fast in my younger years. Thanks, college!

Life sucks sometimes.

Side rant: Garth Brooks, who did not sing live at the CMAs, won Entertainer of the Year. First my mouth hurts, and now my heart hurts. 

Nurse Penny: Yo, something happened to your face today. 

I can fix a drink

As it stands now, I cannot have an implant.

The thing is, I kind of assumed the bone graft I had over the summer would not work. When I say the word 'pain,' I don't mean the normal kind of pain that you feel when you don't feel good.

This was a level of pain that I can't even describe.

Plus, I'm not the kind of person who gets easy fixes. I don't just have a bone graft and then get an implant that works like unicorn poop.

There's not enough bone in that spot for an implant, even with a bone graft.

I saw the x-ray. There's the bone graft, then there's a black hole of nothingness above it.

The oral surgeon asked me if I wanted a bridge. I told him that I just had a $7,000 bridge pulled from my mouth.

He said he could try another bone graft, but my sinus is in the way, so he'd have to "bump the sinus up."

Uh...no.

Or, he said, you could just walk around with a missing tooth.

I guess that's why you shouldn't let an infection eat your face?

I did everything I could to fix that tooth. It was root canalled, root canalled again, it had gum surgery, it had a post in it, it had a bone graft.

When I felt that tooth crack, I made an appointment to get it checked out immediately.

I could not have done anything different.

I gave it all I had.

I can't fix this, guys. The infection ate away at the bone so much that the bone is gone forever.

In the words of a song that I love listening to:

I can't fix that.

But I can fix a drink.

Not lost on me

I wrote this last week. 

You don't have to tell me that dental infections can be bad. Deadly, even.

When I wake up in the morning, I remind myself to be thankful and grateful that I finally found a team of doctors who can fix my problems. 

They're a pretty great team. I like these new people a lot.

It means a lot to me to have people I just met stick up for me and work hard to fix my problems. I haven't had that in the past, and the importance of that is not lost on me.

--

I met doctor #18 today, a new physical therapist because #17 is on maternity leave.

I cancelled my first appointment with #18 because that was the week my tooth, mouth and life exploded.

I explained what happened to my tooth to my PT, because being on antibiotics and pain killers completely wrecked my digestive system. Like, all the progress I had made in that department of my life went down the toilet.

Doctor #18 looked at me after I explained the problem, and she told me the infection I had in my mouth could have gone to my heart.

"That oral surgeon just saved your life."

Today I ate a piece of humble pie. 

I am amazed at Wichita's health care. It's the best care I've ever had and I've loved all the doctors I've gone to there.

Thank you, Wichita, for saving my life.

x

Not going to happen

Found on Reddit: "Fun" and "going out" expenses are not going to happen for a while, because it just hit the fan.

On my nerves

The pain scale, when it comes to teeth, is not 1 to 10.

It's more like 1 to OH MY GOD WHY DO I HAVE A FACE? I WANT TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF.

Yesterday I was looking over the side of the cliff, thinking about jumping off. I also kind of wanted to kill everyone.

Today, I'm a mile away from the cliff, lounging around, smiling and laughing.

Life is stupid like that.

Having dying nerve in your face is not something I recommend, especially if it's only a month after you last had a dying nerve in your face.

My teeth are little assholes.

On a sidenote, I gave a new pharmacy a try this week.

I love it!

They called me a few days ago and asked me a few questions. As in, I talked to an actual human being! And they answered my questions and were nice to me!

That's big, people.

I think that's going to turn out to be one of the better decisions I've made.

The Stupid.

I heard a good saying recently: This weekend I'm just going to drink and forget this week happened.

The person who said that did not have the same week I did. I'll tell my side of the story, though. I don't know what his side of the story is because I wasn't really with it, or able to adult, this week.

To say I had a toothache was an understatement. On a pain scale, it was 'I want to light myself on fire and jump off a cliff to just end it' pain.

After making a phone call where I begged for an earlier appointment, I talked with my endodontist about my pain yesterday.

For those normal people who don't know what an endodontist is, it's a dentist that specializes in root canals. If you don't need one, be thankful and chew something extra crunchy for me tonight.

I was expecting the worst. I was thinking he would tell me I'd need at least two root canals, maybe three. Hell, maybe some of the teeth I was worried about weren't even worth saving.

I told him my symptoms, and my looked at my teeth. Then he poked around my face, underneath my eyes.

Does that hurt?

Well, it doesn't feel pleasant.

What about that?

Well, if you hit it, it hurts.

He then sat me up and told me that I had two pretty serious problems, and that he could only fix one of those problems.

I had a tooth that needed a root canal, and I had another infection that was causing the fever that I had.

My mind went crazy. Jesus Christ, I thought. I need gum surgery again. I have another infected tooth. I need a tooth pulled. Oh my God, I might need a few teeth pulled.

I might as well just get all of my teeth pulled and leave these problems behind, I thought.

Then he told me what the second problem was.

I had a sinus infection.

Wait. That's it?

I felt really, really stupid. I was sure, I was positive, I KNEW I had other teeth problems. (Note: I will always have these problems, but apparently not this time.)

I've gotten those pains mixed up in the past, but I don't think I've ever had them both at once. You'd think at 30 I'd have it all figured out, but I don't.

My whole family spent a couple of days coughing and sneezing, but no one really had a bad cold. I was proud of myself for not catching it.

Apparently I caught it and The Stupid instead.

Oops.