Cutting Edge Tech and Shame in Everyday Ramblings

This picture makes me happy. I suppose I could crop it slightly to move the flowers a bit off center but for now I am enjoying the composition. If you get bored easily with pretty flower pictures this is not the box for you. :)

The dental procedure yesterday was quite intense. I wasn’t even totally sure what he was doing. I knew where it was going to be in my mouth (the other side from where he did the work before) and I was pretty sure it was a bone graft but I wasn’t sure how they could do that on a living tooth.

Now I know.

It is pretty amazing, very creative in it’s own way. They are literally regenerating bone, growing new bone to stabilize this important tooth.

Anyway, in the middle of the procedure, after the prep and before the graft, he stopped and said he was thinking based on the new design and reconstruction plan we are working under I didn’t really need the tooth next to the one we were working on. Would I consider having it extracted?

I thought about it, and I thought about my mother and how I was made inside her with this little tiny mouth and I was thinking about my hygiene ritual that would be easier without it and I thought, it is fine, so I said yes.

They had extra bone regeneration material left over so they put that in the place left by the extraction. It just seemed ironic that I was spending about half the cost of a good laptop to save one tooth and the one next to it was out in about oh seven minutes.

Last night was not fun but I am much better today. The part that I truly don’t like is the ice packing you need to do after, 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off. They gave me an ice pack this time for getting home. I walked down the 10 minutes to the pharmacy with it on. Waiting at the pharmacy made me actually remember how lucky I am even though I was, umm, somewhat miserable. There were folks there with much more serious non elective things going on than me.

If I know anyone going through something like this that is nearby I am going to offer to be (using ODSago’s recent term) an icepack nanny. The person can just stay resting and warm and I would bring them the icepack at the appropriate intervals.

I think doing something like that for someone would make me feel good. And based on my own recent experience it would be an incredible luxury to have help with this. I managed for four hours before I gave up and went to sleep.

There will be swelling and bruising so I am glad I got my hair done.

There is more to come. They did tell me that I was incredible in the chair, so calm, they thought I might have fallen asleep. Ha! Not a chance. I told them, hey, I teach relaxation, I need to be able to deploy it.

I realized something on the way to the clinic practicing deep breathing to help allay some of the anxiety, that I feel a great deal of shame about how lonely I often am. As if it were a personal failing, or that I am unlovable, because the most important person in my life (other than my family and the cats), became ill and died and that I haven’t found a replacement.

Some of the deeper yoga practices I have been doing address and bring up things like shame so I am not surprised by this but still, how sad, I am human, loss is part of the package, as well as occasional bouts of loneliness. Folks in relationship often feel lonely. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is just further proof of how social an animal species we are. Unlike cats. They adapt but are fine solo.

So I am going to see what I can do to let the shame go. I certainly enjoy being on my own, doing what I want to do, when I want to do it and I am no less lovable than anyone else. Rationally I get that.

Now all I need to do is believe it.

Part cat, part pony, mostly human. That would be me.