Tag: oral surgery

When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again

Saturday morning and my first day of the rest of my toothless life. Ironically, you cannot tell I don’t have any bottom teeth by looking at me, even when I talk; it was more obvious when I was only missing some. I also uploaded my new prescription for glasses to Zenni and ordered three new pair–purple, black and clear. I like my red frames, so I will probably give in at some point and buy a pair of those, too–and even with the four pairs I’ll wind up with this year and the three I got from Zenni last year, I am barely paying more than I paid for one pair at the optometrist’s. Not too shabby. So I go back to the dentist to get fitted for the new dentures in three weeks, so I will have the new ones in about a month or so, which is fine. Eating will be probably a challenge, but I am sure I’ll be able to get used to it, and there’s all kinds of softer type food I can eat that doesn’t require teeth to chew.

So yesterday I just drank protein shakes, and today I may progress to yogurt and ice cream. I need to pick up the mail today, so I am going to stop at the Fresh Market on the way home to pick up some more soft food options (baking potatoes, too). I wound up not doing a whole lot yesterday, but I had oral surgery and nine teeth removed, which is traumatizing to the body. It’s little wonder I was really tired for the day, and of course pain killers also make you drowsy and tired. I did read some more of Shawn’s book–what a fucking opening!–and will spend some more time with it today, I think. I don’t feel any pain–I was pretty much pain free by the late afternoon. Whether that was me healing, or the pain killers, or some combination of the two, I cannot say–but I woke up this morning without pain and after rinsing my mouth out, I’m pretty sure the bleeding has stopped. By tomorrow I’m supposed to work my way back into more solid foods–albeit ones that don’t require biting or chewing much, which kind of belies the “solid food” aspect of it–but I’ll be okay. I need to shed a few pounds anyway, and as long as I am getting calories from somewhere, I should be fine. Today I can have fizzy drinks (aka sparkling water and soda) and I have to start rinsing out my mouth every three to four hours with salty water. My face never swelled, which was kind of a cool thing.

I didn’t really do much of anything yesterday; I mostly sat in my chair watching the US Open and did some laundry and dishes, but that was about it. I am going to read some more of Shawn’s book today–I also need to run some errands, as I need softer food options, as I previously mentioned which means going out into the heat. I also need to get gas. I wonder if it’s okay to have coffee this morning? The instructions don’t say anything about hot drinks after the first day–he did mention something about it but I don’t remember what precisely it was, but I remember thinking so no soup either?A quick check of Dr. Google doesn’t recommend anything hot like coffee for at least two days, if not up to five? Yikes. But okay, we have those frappuccino things from Starbucks that Paul likes, and so that should handle my caffeine needs. I do like iced coffee, it’s just that I don’t have any way to make it here at the house. Then again, it’s also not on the written instructions, which I think means it’s not as important as the other things on the list? Probably best not to risk it. I tend to heal and recover more quickly than most (Paul is practically a mutant, given how fast he recovers from things), so I think I should be okay by tomorrow for coffee?

The weather forecast seems to think that we aren’t going to be in the high nineties/over a hundred this week, which is a lovely break. Then again, it is September, and it starts to cool down a little bit after Labor Day. I am hoping that I’ll have the motivation today to get some work done, but I am not going to beat myself up if I don’t get things done the day after an oral surgery. Sorry, that’s just how it is.

So I think I’m going to finish this, my iced coffee, and get my ice cream before heading back into the living room and spending the rest of the morning reading. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Pledging My Love

Well, that was unpleasant.

Not entirely true. My dentist is very good at what he does and I neither felt or heard anything other than some pressure. Some teeth had to be wiggled out, which was weird as I felt nothing but could tell it was being wiggled. But they are out, I have some pain meds, and in three weeks I will go get fitted for my new upper denture and the new, never had before lower. So, those of you at Bouchercon? You saw me looking like a toothless hillbilly from the holler for the last time. It also wound up being a lot cheaper than I was originally quoted; I was told a ballpark figure of $3000 for everything and it was less than two thousand. I was also originally told my hearing aids would be about that same amount, but thanks to Costco I only paid half. So I went from thinking this would all cost me about six grand in total, but I got everything for slightly more than half of that total, which is amazing. Nothing is ever cheaper than you are quoted, right? I am supposed to take it easy the rest of the day, just relax and lay down and keep my head elevated. I can’t have anything other than soft food for the next three days, and even after that I need to stay away from heavily spiced and/or anything super crunchy. That’s not terrible. I can make meatballs on Sunday in the slow cooker for lunches next week, and depending on how I feel when Monday rolls around–I may just go ahead and go into the office and not use any sick time. Thank you, COVID surge; no one will think anything of my being masked the entire time until I get my replacement teeth.

So…now I am officially old, bald, out of shape and toothless. This would have been my worst nightmare when I was in my thirties and early forties; I am so glad I aged out of the pointless vanity–which, let’s be honest, stemmed absolutely from insecurity. When I look back at those pictures of me now, I just shake my head. You really thought you needed to lose more weight and tighten up your body back then, I remember ruefully, while surveying the wreckage of my currently aged and debilitated body. Had someone told me back then that by the time I’d be sixty two I’d no longer be able to wear 29-30 waist jeans, hadn’t set foot in the gym in over a year, and even worse wouldn’t care, I would still be laughing.

While I was waiting (I was early; some parts of the anxiety I will never master or control) I started reading S. A. (Shawn) Cosby’s new All The Sinners Bleed and I can already tell it’s going to be his best so far, which is really saying something. It’s immersive and the language is so smart and strong, and his gift for character is apparent from the very first page. It’s amazing that Shawn keeps getting better with every book, which is every writer’s goal–to have your best work ahead of you. This is why I never understand why some writers get jealous of other writer’s careers; success is always a crapshoot in this business. Great writers who deserve huge audiences, sales, and acclaim too often fly under the radar (Vicky Hendricks is an excellent example of this), and no one ever knows whose career is going to take off and whose is not; we cannot control any of that, so you have to write the best book you can and market and promote the best you can and hope for the best. Being jealous of someone else’s success is a fool’s game destined to leave you broken, bitter, and not much fun to be around. The only envy I have for other writers is for their talent, and even then it’s more of a call for me to push myself harder and farther and take bigger risks.

It’s always lovely when kind and generous and talented people like Shawn break out, and I always celebrate the success of others.

I can feel the novocaine beginning to fade, so I am going to take a pain killer and go over to my chair with Shawn’s bed. Enjoy your Friday, everyone.

Sunflower

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I slept super-great last night–the first time this week that has happened–and only woke up once. I feel rested and good this morning. Tomorrow, of course, I have to get my oral surgery done in the morning (yay? Well, the end result will be a lot of pain to end the almost constant pain I’ve been living with for years, so that’s better, right?) and then it will be a soft food/mostly liquid (not alcoholic) for I don’t know how long. I weighed myself yesterday, and with even my shoes and belt on and my keys attached to my belt and my wallet in my pocket, I’d lost three pounds since the last time I weighed myself (I would imagine all the eating I did in San Diego made me weight go up dramatically). It would be great if I could get back down to 200 at some point (I remember the days vividly when I would never admit to weighing that much publicly; then again, weighing that much would have completely freaked me out).

I managed to get the page proofing for Mississippi River Mischief done last night after work, and the book’s not bad at all. The writing is strong and the plot makes sense, which is always a plus, and it does move along nicely. I also had forgotten that I had set up the next one in the afterward; or at least had gotten the premise begun–this next one is going to take place while the boys are living in the dower house on Papa Diderot’s Garden District property, and maybe, just maybe, this next one will be the long-awaited and never-written (thanks to Katrina) Hurricane Party Hustle. Then again I am getting ahead of myself, am I not? Let me get all this other stuff done first and then I can worry about the tenth Scotty. But next year Scotty turns twenty-one at last (legal at last! legal at last!) and so I think I may spend a lot of time next year celebrating twenty-one years of Scotty. I think the ebook for Jackson Square Jazz might finally get launched, making the book available for the first time since 2010, and then I can rest easy at long last. I’m not sure how much work I am going to be able to do this weekend–will I be on painkillers the entire time? Will I be too zonked out on painkillers to get anything done this weekend? I guess we shall just have to wait and see. I also don’t know if and when I’ll be blogging again, either. But hopefully I can be lucid enough to read S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed or if I can’t read, lucid enough to watch movies.

We watched some of the US Open last night, which was nice. I keep forgetting that it’s happening; we stream now rather than have cable, so I no longer have any idea when anything actually airs or what is actually airing, which is a significant shift in how I watch television. It was nice that so many Americans made it to the quarter-finals–it’s been a long time since the US made such a great showing at the US Open–and sadly, I have to admit that I’ve just not been as interested in tennis since Serena Williams retired. But I do love to watch tennis, as I remembered last night as I proofed, occasionally looking up to watch the action. We watched Madison Keys win, and then watched Carlos Alcazar until I went to bed (Paul of course stayed up watching).

The cover proof also landed in my inbox this morning so that’s what I’ll be doing tonight: filling out the page proof form and proofing the cover. I’m starting to feel creative again, too, which is super-great. I want to get some more writing done, and of course I need to start plotting out the next two books I am going to write while trying to finish a draft of Muscles, which is the plan for this fall (I probably will have to put Muscles aside to work on something else, but might as well get as much done as I can before the arm surgery, whenever that might wind up being).

More and more people who’d been at Bouchercon are testing positive for COVID, which believe me is the worst possible outcome I could have when I swab myself every morning. Sure, it means I’d have to reschedule the oral surgery, but there are definitely worse things that could happen to me then testing positive for it. I would definitely need to be past it when I consult with the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine. It’s weird because everything is so up in the air until I know what’s going on with my arm, and how long the recovery process is going to be. I don’t know that I want to be doing a lot of traveling with my arm in a soft cast and a sling (and not the good kind, wink wink nudge nudge) because how would i handle the carry-on luggage? Heavy sigh. Again–not going to worry about it because that’s just borrowing trouble.

And on that note, my test is negative and I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Thursday, Constant Reader.

Saying Hello, Saying I Love You, Saying Goodbye

Tuesday and tomorrow I depart for San Diego. I am trying very hard not to get anxious about everything, but I am starting to feel it a bit. I have to decide what to pack, and I need to see what the weather is going to be like. I discovered a conflict in my schedule that I have to resolve in a way I don’t want, and there’s groceries to make and mail and prescriptions to pick up and laundry and dishes to finish and yes, I am going to be hopping all day today getting ready and/or thinking about the trip and making plans. I also have a lot of work to do in the office before I leave, because the month changes while I am gone so the things I always do over the month change have to be done–or at least I can get it as ready as I can. I think I answered all the emails I needed to get answered, and I think I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.

I ran errands last night on the way home circling a thunderstorm, and then once I was finished I drove directly into its beating heart as it gave us a little respite from the horrific, seemingly endless heat. The big cold drops of rain started splatting down from above like liquid shrapnel. I managed to get inside the house before it really started coming down, and there was thunder and lightning, too. A marvelous New Orleans summer tropical storm, like we haven’t had hardly any of this entire blighted summer of hellish heat. The kind where so much water comes down the streets fill, swirling around catch basins and rising closer to the bottoms of cars, while the potholes and low=lying cracks and buckles in roads and sidewalks immediately fill with clear water. The temperature drops precipitously, given tired air conditioning systems the opportunity to catch up and finally take a well-deserved break after weeks of going at full blast–and sometimes not being able to keep up. The kind where condensation finally appears on your windows for the first time this summer, or so it seems. And even though you know all that water means it’ll be muggy as a rain forest again tomorrow as it evaporates into the heated air once more, you can at least breathe for a moment and enjoy the blessed break from what has become an unfortunate norm this summer.

But in checking my email, I see that today’s severe weather alert is merely coastal flooding, and there’s no extreme heat warning for the day, which is actually kind of nice. Today will be a break, and tomorrow I leave for the coast. My car will be roasting, of course, in the long-term off-airport parking lot, but there are worse things. I’m really looking forward to the trip, pushing down all of my anxiety triggers around traveling, and I will get home Sunday night, have Monday off, and then return to the office on Tuesday. I’m hoping there won’t be an adjustment to time zones involved on this trip, but I am sure it will be. If I wake up at my usual time, it will be four in the morning on the coast. But the day of traveling home will wear me out, plus I’ll be exhausted from being “on” panels and socializing. I just have to get over my intense FOMO and repair to my room to rest and relax periodically; I don’t need to be non-stop on the go, etc. and need to remember I’m an introvert who primarily is used to dealing with people quietly, one on one, and not in group environments. There will be lots of overstimulation.

But I can’t wait to see my queer crime writer friends again! Woo-hoo! They are always a good time.

I was tired when I got home last night from errands and so forth, and the thunderstorm and the damp chill in the air didn’t help matters very much. Paul stayed upstairs watching the US Open–so I have no need to fear Paul’s boredom while I am gone, as he’ll have the tennis to watch. We’re also hoping to get a cat at last once I get back, although my oral surgery is scheduled for that Friday; depending on how I feel, we could possibly get one on Saturday if I don’t still need painkillers and thus have a clear enough mind to drive, which would be super-great. All of my fall plans are currently on hold until I find out when my arm surgery is going to be. I hate that, because I feel like I am wasting time, which brings the anxiety out again. It’s so much fun being me, Constant Reader, you have literally no idea. But therein lies the rub; life really always is a endless string of “hurry up and wait” or “can’t make any plans until I find this out.” The joys of being older.

I think for now at least there’s nothing potentially going to develop that will threaten Louisiana tropically while I am gone–traveling during hurricane season means one more thing to check off the list. I am sorry and worried about those in the path of this Idalia monster that has Florida strictly in its sights. (If I were an evangelical piece of shit, I’d say something like “God is clearly not pleased with deSantis”–but I happily leave that kind of blame-shame to the “christian” cos-players. Funny how it’s usually red states at risk but they don’t see that as God’s punishment, but let something happen to a blue state–or New Orleans–and they start thumping their Bibles again instead of reading them. I’m so glad I’m not an evangelical piece of shit cosplay christian.)

I was hoping to get some writing done last night, but I wound up not doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I watched some history videos on Youtube, started to watch the latest episode of Foundation–which, truth be told, is extremely well done but difficult to follow because it doesn’t always hold my interest, but I am definitely here for hot Lee Pace–but gave up as the opening credits rolled and went back to Youtube. I did end up watching something but couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life this morning, so clearly it made no impact on me. I did greatly enjoy the recent episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite depictions of Superman and his cast of characters, but I think tonight–after cleaning the downstairs, packing, and cleaning out the refrigerator–I am going to read some more of Kelly Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, which I am enjoying; I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am not enjoying the book–it’s just that the heat and my mind being sort of fried has made it really hard for me to focus on reading something longform. I also finished reading the proofs for Mississippi River Mischief, which I’ll be bring with me to try to get some progress made on the proofing; if I manage to do that and nothing else while in San Diego I will be very pleased.

And on that note I think I will head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I will be writing to you before I leave for the coast. Huzzah!