Thursday, February 21, 2008

 

My week

Sunday

I thought it was a little odd that the road in front of our house (one of the busiest in our little town of 500) hadn't been plowed, but figured they were out taking care of the state highways, which it is not. To get to church, I take 2 state highways then 1 US highway, on which is the church. So I started out of town on the first state highway and only one lane had been plowed (the opposite direction I was heading), but that was OK because, except for going over hills, I could easily slip (pun intended, though not actually all that true) over and drive in a mostly just wet lane.

Then I got to the second state highway. One lane on it had been plowed, but a while before, so I kicked it into 4 wheel drive, but was still being cautious and going quite slowly. My guess is that the US highway was in better shape than these two, but I really didn't feel like trying to do 6 miles at 25-30 miles an hour TOPS in 4 wheel drive to get to a church service I didn't HAVE to be at. If we were singing, I probably would have pushed it and seen how the US highway was, but I decided it wasn't worth it.

Oh, and by the time I got home, one lane in front of our house had been plowed. They're usually better than that, really. Must be a Sunday morning thing. A lot of churches in Topeka were canceled, though, so that should have been a clue to me, but I wanted to try anyway.


Tuesday

I have been hanging out quite a bit in the geocaching forums lately and one of the regulars I've become friends with was visiting her family in Leavenworth this week. So she and I met up halfway between there and here for lunch and a little caching. It was good to get out of the house farther than Manhattan and see someone other than our congregation. It was a lot of fun and we discovered that we're both Missouri Synod Lutherans.




Wednesday

I had visited the dentist for a checkup (finally!) on Friday and was informed that one of my wisdom teeth had a cavity and needed to be pulled. I managed to get in for that yesterday because they had a cancellation.

The day started out well enough... I got all my errands done and was just trying to figure out what to do with the 20 minutes before my appointment when I got a call from the dentist's office asking if I wanted to come in right then because they were running ahead of schedule. Perfect! Off I went, they got me all prepped, I was thoroughly numbed, and he managed to get the tooth pulled. Both he and the hygienist agreed it had quite a strong hold--so strong that one of the roots was left behind. This was complicated by the fact that the roots were curved in toward each other. So about 30 minutes later, he managed to finally get the root out and sent me on my way with 2 pain killer prescriptions.

Here's where things started going badly. First off, like a dummy I had only had coffee for breakfast. Then, since my appointment was at noon, I decided to hold off on lunch and eat when I got home. I will never make that mistake again. The dentist told me I should have no problem filling both prescriptions (ibuprofen and hydrocodone) on post at the hospital. Gotta love socialized medicine. An hour and a half wait later... I had the ibuprofen but was told I would have to go somewhere like Walgreens or Wal-Mart to get the hydrocodone. So off to Wal-Mart I went because it was the closest. I'm not sure I'll do that again either. It would have been faster for me to drive all the way back to the other side of Manhattan to Walgreens. They told me it would be an hour before they could have my FIFTEEN pills for me. So I wasted what time I could muster, then thought about taking some of my ibuprofen, but really didn't want to on a completely empty stomach. By almost 4 pm, the pharmacy manager took pity on the woman sitting by the pharmacy, probably looking to be in quite a bit of pain because the Novocaine (or whatever he used) had worn off, and bumped my prescription up to "critical" status. He even let me cut in line (a rather long line at that point, too) to sign and pay for it. I didn't ask him to, but I probably didn't look very pretty.

A half hour drive (half of which while talking to Paul through clenched teeth from the gauze on the wound) later and I was finally home, got some food, and took an ibuprofen, which actually went to work fairly quickly.

The verdict: I think I'll take a tooth extraction over a root canal, but only because you have to hold your mouth open so wide for so long with a root canal. I don't know about the post-procedure pain comparison, though, because Paul is pretty sure that they injected me with a 24-hour pain reliever right at the end of my root canal, but I couldn't tell ya anymore. Plus I think there was more pain later from the procedure of fitting the crown for me, mostly because I'm prone to mouth sores which, at least for me, were inevitable from that.


Now I'm off to find some food that won't hurt to eat. I'm only on over-the-counter ibuprofen now, though, which makes me happy. I just hope I don't get a dry socket like my dentist thinks I probably will.

13:02  + 
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