An Insult to the Body

insult

 (ĭn-sŭlt′)

v. in·sulted, in·sulting, in·sults

n. (ĭn′sŭlt′)

a. Medicine A bodily injury, irritation, or trauma.

b. Something that causes injury, irritation, or trauma: "the middle of the Bronx, buffeted and poisoned by the worst environmental insults that urban America can dish out" (William K. Stevens).

American Heritage Medical Dictionary.

I had oral surgery earlier this week, which results in an "insult to the body".  I.e., an injury or trauma.

A necessary one, and the oral surgeon did a super good job.  And fast too.  I was really impressed.

Some time ago I fractured a molar right down the center.  I.e., if you took its vertical axis, and ran a line right down the center from front to back, I fractured it.

It was tooth number 31, to be precise.

I knew shortly after it occured that it had occurred, even though I don't know what caused it to occur.  The reason that I knew is that I've done that several times before, although never nearly as seriously.  Generally, when it's happened, it's been a moderate fracture.  Here, however, I could tell that it went right through the tooth.

When it occurred, I was getting ready for a trial and therefore I ignored it.  I knew that extracting it would be a bit of an ordeal and I couldn't afford that at the time.  But when the trial went away, that was another matter, aso I scheduled a visit to my dentist right away.  He removed a filling thinking that something associated with that was what was causing my pain, but as soon as the filing was off, the fracture was evident.  So it was off to the oral surgeon.

That experience was odd for me as my father, who was a dentist, used to pull teeth himself.  I guess I just figure that dentist do that, but he died twenty eight years ago and things have changed.  My current dentist, who was a young dentist back then and who knew my father (he'd been their family dentist prior to his becoming a dentist) has often remarked that he wonders what my father would have thought of how things developed.  I wonder too.  I think he'd be impressed.

Anyhow, the last time I had a serious crack what drove me in quickly was fatigue.  You wouldn't think that having a cracked tooth would make you tired, but it did.  This one didn't, even though it was painful and I knew what it was.

With number 31, came number 32.  I knew that was going to be the case even before my dentist told me that, and the oral surgeon confirmed it.

I didn't want to be a dentist when I was young.  I don't know why.  It isn't as if I've picked up an adult regret about not having followed that vocation, but it is odd to me that I've never picked up a desire to do that.  My father's medical knowledge was incredibly vast, so you'd have thought I'd have picked up that desire.  In some odd way, I wish I had.  But I didn't, and I still don't have it.  I feel like a bit of a slacker, frankly, for not having developed it, even though, as life would have it, I've ended up with the same dedication to work that my father had.  I wouldn't have seen that coming.

Anyhow, I never picked up the desire to be a dentist but I did pick up, oddly enough, a lot of dental knowledge. Without being told, I knew that number 32, as wisdom tooth, ahd to come out as once it's neighbor 31 was out, it'd move.

Indeed, number 32 got a three decade long reprieve due to my father's untimely death at age 62.  My father was taking my wisdom teeth out (again, note that he wasn't oral surgeon) as they "erupted", which they do from time to time. He'd gotten two of them, and two remain.  Now only one, tooth 17, remains.  I can feel it barely poking up.  Somehow in the last decade, they quit erupting and were fixed in place.  The removal of 31 would have put 32 on the move, and I knew that wisdom teeth moving in the modern jaw, as opposed to the archaic one, is one of the reasons they're a problem.  They move, get impacted, and a real problem is off and running.  Having said that, I figured that I was probably safe on this as they have pretty obviously quit erupting.  Once 31 was cracked, I knew it was coming out, and I knew that 32 would have to go.

So earlier this week I went to the oral surgeon.

I just took a local, and therefore I was awake and a student of the entire event.  I was stunned by how quick it was.  He really is a master of extraction, even though the fractured molar had broken into three or more parts.  It was a mess.  "Well that stinks" is the first thing he said to his assistant when the main part came out without the rest.  But it was really fast.  No. 32 came right out.

Anyhow, I felt fine at first even though I was bleeding.

A couple of hours later, I was in intense pain.  I couldn't get the bleeding to really stop for hours. And this morning, when I woke up, I'd not only slept an extra hour beyond the normal, I was dead tired.  I'm finishing my coffee this morning out of necessity, and I have a very long day ahead of me, stretching into the night.

A few observations.

I'm amazed by how injuries now really wipe me out, and hence the name for this entry.  I'm in fairly decent shape for age 57.  Indeed, I'm in better shape than most of my contemporaries.  But recovering from injuries now takes forever.

And I have some experience with this.  I"ve broken so many bones in my body that when some future archeologist digs me up, he's going to think that I was a bull rider or a lightly boned Neanderthal.  

Indeed, recovering physically from anything takes me a lot longer than it used to.  On weekends I still often hike for miles, but I'll feel it on Mondays.

Secondly, it strikes me how rough things must be for dedicated drinkers and smokers.  I don't smoke and I'm not in the "gotta have a drink" category, so I'm good to go on it, but in looking at the mediation I received, and the post procedure material, warnings about smoking within the first week of the extraction are there as well as warnings about the pharmaceuticals being contraindicated for alcohol.  I'm only fighting feeling really worn out and sleepy.  I can't imagine what it would be like fighting an addiction as well.

And I'm just dealing with your garden variety pain killers recently, which I rarely take.  I'm allergic to the heavy duty ones and never take them.  They're super contraindicated.

As another item, how rough it must have been before modern dentistry.  I'll have to look it up, but back before Novocain, how did people endure these procedures?  Yikes.

Finally, I don't know if its just who've I've become, or the modern world, but I was struck by how I didn't get a break from work, which had been a little on my mind anyhow due to this entry from A Hundred Years Ago.

1920 Advice for Preparing a Meal Tray for a Sick Person

Now first, let me note, I hate being sick.  I just hate it, and that's in normal times.  Right now, you can't hear somebody cough without worrying about COVID 19.

But nonetheless, when I was a kid, there was as certain "if you are sick stay home and take it easy" type of thinking.  Basically, you didn't want to be sick, but if you were, you could stay home and read books.  

That sort of thinking translated at least a little bit to adulthood.  When I was in junior high I remember watching a Warner Brothers cartoon in some class urging you to stay home if you were sick, and which suggested that being sick with a cold was nature's way of making you take some time off.  Indeed, I've heard that suggestion made from time to time.

Indeed, there's something to that, but not directly.  We get sick in part, but not solely of course, due to high stress and fatigue.  That wears us down and makes us vulnerable to infections.  Yet it's pretty clear that I keep on keeping on.

Maybe it's different from others in other lines of work, but at least for the self employed with in town jobs, being sick is a disaster.  You haven't planned for it, and therefore you generally keep on keeping on anyhow.

Or at least I do, and I may not be the norm.

I had actually planned to go back to work after the extractions, but about an hour later it was pretty clear I wasn't going to be able to do that.  I worked some from home, but frankly not very efficiently.

Maybe that just means I'm in that "workaholic" category, although there's no such thing as "workahol".

It is pretty amazing to me in a way as when I was a student I always promised myself that there were things I'd never let work get in the way of.  I know that you are probably thinking I'm going to say "family and friends", but what I'm really thinking of is hunting and the outdoors.  Well, I have let it get in the way of that and I still do. And more and more so as time has gone on.

In fact, tomorrow is the opening day for general deer season around here and I'm unlikely to get out for opening day.  When I was a younger lawyer, I always did. Now I have a harder time doing that simply as my weeks are so hectic that I don't conceive of myself having the week days to take off, and besides that I'm tired enough that getting ready for something outside the routine isn't easy.  We'll see, although this year that would additionally meaning shooting a rifle just a few days out of oral surgery, which might not be smart.

We'll see.

Finally, when they extracted my teeth they threw them away.  No big deal, but I was hoping to actually keep them.

Yep, that's odd for somebody of my age, but in part I really wanted to see what the fractured molar looked like.  I know it was pretty messed up, but I'm just curious about that stuff.

Besides that, I'd had these teeth for a really long time, and they're part of me.  Now they're somewhere else.  On the last day, I'll get them back, but it's odd to think of them being separated from me for probable millenia.  I hope they fare well.