The Gentle Artisan Hard at Work at His Craft
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I know I don’t usually do these “day in the life” blog posts, but I figured I owed you all an explanation of why I wasn’t blogging like the wind today, promoting the most excellent “on fiah” aspects of The PPT, and generally contributing to the greater wisdom of iBC.com…
Or at least letting some of the Gore defenders have it on that previous posting. Seriously people, focus like a laser here… loving one’s children and one’s environment and taking it hard to the global authoritarian hypocrites who attempt to manipulate those values for power and profit ends are not mutually exclusive concepts…. sheesh.
But we’ll continue that discussion at a later date. First, my day in hell…
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It actually started last night whilst I was clutching my tooth brush betwixt my teeth whilst simultaneously helping the wee one with some pajama misalignment he had orchestrated. A faint “click” in the front of my mouth told me something was wrong, and sure enough, one of two crowns I’d had placed on my rabbit chompers after a tragic rugby-game collision-excision had somehow broken loose from it’s mooring, leaving me with a gap in my face that had me looking like an extra on Deliverance, sans classy banjo and bowl haircut.
Not exactly the “captain of industry” look I wanted to work for my Monday morning meeting, however.
Luckily, my extremely attactive and efficient –if retardedly expensive —Lady Dentist was able fit me into her earliest slot at 7:30 am this morning. I figured I’d be in and out with a repair before market open. I thought horribly wrong.
After being ushered into her warmly lit and well appointed rooms, I was quickly and efficiently seated, x-rayed (twice) and tucked in with a descending flat screen and cosy neck pillow rigging by her equally comely Eastern European dental assistant, while I awaited the return of Lady Dentifrice, Lip-Glossed Queen of the latte-set tooth crowd.
She returned all frowny faced, my vexxing x-rays clutched against her charcoal gray cashmere-sweatered bosom, and a gleam of concern nesting behind her au currant steel framed specs. The news was bad, and I won’t bore you with it, but it did not come out of the “bloodless, pain-free and inexpensive” box from which I’d pulled so many previous procedures in my incredibly lucky 40 year dental track-record. No this one started with minor oral surgery and ended with expensive cosmetic sturm and drang.
Luckily, she felt she could get most of it done today, and in about two or so hours. Big deal, I thought, so I have to watch Kudlow with that weird haircut and Erin suck up to Dubai money men for two more hours… I’ll live…
Two quarts of lidocaine and probably a good pint and a half of my blood later, it was nearing two o’clock and my back was beggining to spasm on me. While my sturdy and still impeccably lip-glossed Lady Dentite had managed to take care of all the complicated prepping, modeling, whittling, etc., that came with fixing not one, but two of my damaged teeth (turns out the second one was showing similar fractious inclinations, so…), she still had not managed to extricate the last bit of “root” from aforesaid canal…
And it wasn’t for want of trying, either, let me tell you. The woman has forearms like coiled springs of moly-carbon steel. But I can only assume she was getting tired of the jets of arterial blood just missing her custom-cut snow white Armani lab coat, because she finally sent me to the oral surgeon to have the final piece removed.
At 2:15 today I drove approximately 1.5 miles to another dentist/M.D. office in the same neighborhood, but I might as well have been driving to the gates of hell. As warm and inviting as my dentist’s offices were, these new rooms were like something out of a fifties-era Raymond Burr sci-fi movie. The front office ladies were plump and over-makeuped, and their smiles!… Their smiles put the chill of the winter grave in me…
After filling out five(!) pages of insurance and disclaimer/disclosure errata, I was ushered into the pre-Roe v. Wade clincian’s “operating room” which looked nothing like the warm and modern offices from which I’d just travelled, and really not un-like a not so recently outfitted janitor’s closet.
The tools of my imminent torture were laid out on a wooden bench that looked like it had been stolen from Jacob Marley. They were wrapped in sterilized plastic, but they were no disposables… no, quite the opposite. I was pretty sure that those ratchets, blades and sutures had seen as many summers as I had — if not more. The drill was brass — I shit you not– as was the suction vacuum! It was like something out of a steam-punk graphic novel.
At this point, I’m looking around for an escape route out of there, but I have another problem — my anaesthesia from the long hours previous had begun to wear off and the hole in my head was beginning to throb. I flagged down a passing nurse and she nodded knowingly — “Can you take Vicoden okay?” she asked me.
I’m like (WTF?) to myself, but then I realize she’s only getting my pain prescription ready for after the coming ordeal, and I make it clear, I need to be “re-Lido’d” post-haste. (By this time, around 3 pm, I’ve got all the lingo down cold.) She ambles off to find the doctor.
He finally comes in about fifteen minutes later (luckily, I’d brought a book, my friends at CNBC were NOT an option at this shoppe), and he’s lanky and athletic, wearing scrubs that had seen better days. You ever have that feeling when you first meet someone who’s supposed to be a doctor and the first thing that pops into your head — unbidden — is “Is this guy really a doctor?” That was my first impression.
He looks at my x-rays (yes they had to take a third “full header” this time) and looks over at me and says “Number nine… well, you know that’s gonna come out right?” I think I gulped in assent, because he proceeded to whip out another steam punk-device, a Jules Verne-looking plunger with about a four inch needle on the end of it. The man could’ve started knitting with this thing it was so big. He proceeds to do the “shake the lip” needle insertion thing my Dad’s dentist (who I was sentenced to as a kid) did 35 years ago.
So far so good. The old half gallon of numb-juice from the previous episode in what in contrast was clearly Ellisium held fast and I only felt about a quarter of the four inch spike he was inserting. Then he threw me for a loop and said — sorry, we need to get the palette, too. Gulping again, and praying to the Anaesthesia gods that my personal dentite had sufficiently benumbed the roof of my mouth as well I took a sharp intake of air and he went in…
No dice, I thought, as I felt him trying to drive that instrument of Vulcan into my nasal cavity from below. Yipe! I said… “Sorry” he said — very sympathetically, considering the circumstances. His assistant grinned stoically. Grimaced, really. 15 more minutes went by as they waited for all this new juice to “settle.” I began to worry it would start wearing off, when he finally reappeared, smocked out and read for action…
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You know what… I am going to end this here, rather than get into the medieval-on-my-ass scene that followed. I just realized I’m probably making quite a few of you ill with all this, and it’s getting late and my Vikes are wearing off again… Let it comfort your heart to know it all came out well in the end, and I’m halfway done with this “simple fix.”
Salud.
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On market stuff, nothing of major surprise today. Well, Monsanto Company [[MON]] was a bit of a pleasant surprise, as was the continual holding of the PM markets in green territory. I still think it’s a mirage however, and my “tell” stock United Parcel Service, Inc. [[UPS]] looks like it’s going to take Christmas break early.
Have cash on hand. Pullback coming. Best to you.
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