I am still here. After a couple months with a temporary tooth (which is plenty good enough for me, except it occasionally tries to eat a spot on my lower lip) I am supposed to the the permanent crown that is expected to last as long as the rest of my body and then some. No jaw drilling required, as that part is already in place (and hasn’t come loose yet), but that’s only the root. The stalk and flower will both be replaced. Evidently this is something that takes a lot of time to make. And also half an hour to put in place. Well, that should be interesting.
Dental implant day
Posted by Itlandm on October 21, 2018
Tomorrow morning is jaw surgery day, when the elderly jaw surgeon (evidently that is a thing here, completely separate from other surgeons because they have a different financing) is supposed to inject me with a neurotoxin in my head and then drill a hole in my head and, if I live long enough, screw a bit of titanium into my head. OK, not the top of my head, but I still feel extremely uncomfortable about this thing. On the other hand, leaving a nest of anaerobic bacteria indefinitely in my head is not really woohoo either. So here we go. Probably. Unless something gets in the way again. Like the three previous times.
One good thing about that is that each time it is delayed, I am a bit less sure that I am going to die from the procedure, right there and then. (This is good because it reduces the chance that I am frightened to death, which is a real thing.) The first time I felt like I was on death row, the second time I though maybe there was chance of survival. Now I think my chance of survival is about 99%. I have looked around the Net for horror stories but they are surprisingly few and far between, and mostly amount to the fake tooth failing to take root. Even so, just because it works for humans does not mean it works for me. Between my red hair, autism and Neanderthal genes, drugs tend to affect me in unpredictable ways. (I mean legal drugs, not intentionally unpredictable drugs.)
So if you never hear from me again that is probably the reason. Or I got run over by a car while trying to reach an Ingress portal. Or choked on a piece of chocolate. But if it is tomorrow, then probably this.
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Health update
Posted by Itlandm on April 20, 2017
I survived the whiplash without any lasting damage. The sides of my neck were a bit tender for a couple days, as predicted by the doctor that came to the crash site, but that’s all.
Lately I have been eating less and less, but this is unrelated to the crash, it is part of a long, slow trend. It has come so far that eating a sandwich makes me unpleasantly full, so I only eat a handful of snacks and a glass of water mixed with Pepsi, or a cup of yogurt or two, or a banana. Any of these keeps me feeling full for about 6 hours. Obviously this has effects (or lack thereof) further down the digestive tract. Ah, the excitement of old age!
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Moderate bus crash day
Posted by Itlandm on March 9, 2017
Today something genuinely exciting happened: The commute bus I was on had to brake for a truck that came out from a gas station, then the bus was hit from behind by another truck and pushed into the first truck. That sure was unexpected! I mean, I would have expected a crash with the first truck, but at a pretty slow speed because our driver braked really well. Instead we got unexpectedly hit from behind, giving everyone an instant whiplash. My glasses ended up in the seat behind me. As far as I noticed, everyone including the driver got a headache or neck pain. A light headache in my case. It was instant, like throwing a switch. It could have been a lot worse if the truck hadn’t slowed down quite a bit. Nobody was splattered, not even those without seat belts, but there were lots of glass shards and almost everyone hurt a bit, some more than a bit, but none were taken to the hospital I think. The lady in front of me wanted to get checked out at the hospital but it did not happen.
Sitting in the second seat on the right-hand side, I had a very good view of the truck coming too far out in the road and the bust driver stopping, but I did not see the truck behind us. I had to give my name and birth date to the police and the doctor who came to the crash site.
Even though almost everyone was in some degree of pain, the police decided that there was no person damage. If there had been, it would have become a police case with bureaucracy and people having to show up in court, stuff like that, so I totally understand them. The doctor said to just go home and to go to the emergency room in case of nausea, vision disturbances or pricking in fingers and toes. As for the pain, he said it would probably get worse before getting better, but only a few days. To be honest, at bedtime it is pretty much unchanged, but sleeping is famous for doing strange things to necks, so who knows.
Probably won’t be needing the 7208 though.
Newspaper article in Norwegian about the accident.
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“Free music”
Posted by Itlandm on August 13, 2016
The Shellfish Festival here in Mandal is providing the whole town with free music, whether we want it or not. I am not recording.
There is a saying that 90% of everything is crud. What it fails to mention is that which 10% are not crud varies from person to person. There are people out there who actually paid to get close enough to this music to damage their hearing. The world is a strange place, and the humans not least.
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You have to wonder…
Posted by Itlandm on April 28, 2016
Today my pulse is around 30 beats higher than normal. This is usually a sign that a noticeable infection is coming on, like a flu or “stomach flu”. And at the same time, for the first time in months, the Smurfs have come to wreak havoc on my portals and even made a long link from the highest point in the town. (Smurfs going out of their cars, how often do you see that?)
Coincidence?
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Inflammation phase 2
Posted by Itlandm on February 20, 2015
Today the pain in the gums is much reduced, while there is a more widespread stump pain spread around the upper jaw (and to a much smaller degree the lower jaw) as well as some sense of pressure and occasional slight pain more widely in the left side of the face. The lymph node on the left side of the neck is also a bit tender. During the evening my heart rate was 15-20 bpm above baseline, and I had a slight temperature. (Not enough to qualify as fever.) I did however have some chest cough at the time, so that could be the source of the systemic symptoms.
I am told that people can die from a broken heart, but my impression is that death from a broken tooth is very rare. If it doesn’t get worse than this, I can continue my work in this world.
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Scientific Healing Trance
Posted by Itlandm on February 18, 2015
I woke up in the morning and my gums and jaw hurt more than the night before. This was an unpleasant surprise. I licked my wounds, brushed my teeth, and spent 40 minutes listening to brainwave entrainment soundtrack at 2 Hz. That corresponds to the upper range of slow-wave sleep, and I made no effort to stay awake either. Slow-wave sleep is where we secrete Human Growth Hormone (or at least its precursor), which in adults does not cause actual growth (except for noses, ears and other cartilage, and very little even there) but rather just regeneration. Which was what I was after, quite apart from also dampening the pain.
I worked from home this day, and after work I spent another 40 minutes with the brainwave entrainment, and once more later in the evening or early night. The side effect of this was that I was more awake than I like to be by midnight, but that is OK since I did sleep part of the time and even when not, this entrainment substitutes for sleep within reasonable amounts.
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The hour of my dentistry is upon me!
Posted by Itlandm on February 17, 2015
Actually, two different hours of dentistry. The one early in the day was spent taking X-ray and consulting with another dentist on the matter. Then I came back an hour and a half before closing. The dentist had to cut away a little of my gums to get to the broken part, remove the broken natural tooth and put on a temporary (and fragile) dummy tooth. There were also something like three times he shoved some synthetic porridge-like substance into my mouth, which hardened to a negative of my tooth, once for the upper jaw and twice for the lower. I don’t know why they needed to make molds for all my teeth when I was only going to replace one, but it probably cost the same.
It was a distinctly uncomfortable experience all in all. It did not hurt much, because the gums were number before the cutting started. But not being able to swallow for a long time is very unpleasant to me, as goo from my sinuses slowly trickles down the back of my throat. Even if I sleep on my back or in a recliner, I will often wake up coughing to get air. So that was rather worse than the cutting and drilling, strange as it may sound.
The pain gradually turned back on over the evening, but I can live with that.
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Broken tooth, part 2
Posted by Itlandm on February 16, 2015
My dentist was not in, but I got an appointment for tomorrow before noon. It is not so painful that this is a problem.
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