28 year old
Pagan female who lives in Florida with her guy and
two cats,
loves Disney, reads fanatically, tinkers in
photography and
believes growing up is overrated.
Help support
Pet Cancer Awareness
I lost my beloved cat,
Kush, to cancer
in 2003. Cancer is the #1 disease-related cause of death for
cats and dogs. With your support, together we can find a cure
Noah's Wish
Noah's Wish is a not-for-profit, animal welfare organization,
with a straightforward mission. We exist to keep animals alive
during disasters.
ASPCA
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
There are people on the net that have nothing better to do
with their time
then be nasty to other people online. They post rude comments, spend hours
a day talking about sites they hate so much, that they well, spend hours a
day talking about them. (lame) They mock the owners and posters for their
opinions and their right to free speech. They expect everyone to fit into
their narrow-minded little world view or else they throw a temper tantrum.
To these people I say grow up.
Here's a bit of info people...the web is
a HUGE place. If you don't like what I say here, or who I am, or what I
do, or talk about, or what I look like, or the color of my hair, or
whatever asinine thing you dwell on, go somewhere else. It's
really, really easy. Honest. You just click the little "x" in
the corner of your browser and *poof* the offending, big, mean and nasty
site has disappeared.
I pay for this site. It's mine. That
means I can use it for whatever the hell I want to. Don't like it if I'm
bitching about something in my life? Oh fucking well. Go somewhere else.
Think I'm stupid for expressing my thoughts? Too fucking bad, don't read
them. Somewhere along the line, someone forgot this simple fact: Live
and let live Don't like me, cool, fine, whatever, I don't care.
This journal is NOT for you. It's for me. I'm not in it for popularity or
fame or anything stupid like that. I write it because I need to write and
express myself and get things out of my head sometimes. So read or don't,
it doesn't matter, but don't waste my time (or yours) bitching about it.
*gets off soapbox*
Tooth Drive: I
raised $550 of $850 I need for my dental work when the
other shoe dropped. One of my teeth now needs a critical
root canal - over $2,000 in costs. There's no way
I can come up with this on my own in the next 2-3
months. So I need your help. Please consider using one
of my links below. Pass my
jewelry link along to others.
Help spread the word. If I were able to get $10 from 200
people, I would be there. I don't think it's that much
or that hard. But I need help. Thank you.
Dreamhost is a great webhost with a TON
of bandwidth and features. I use them myself.
use MISSM25OFF for $25 off!
free sterling silver & gemstone jewelry.
not a scam, lovely stuff use
my link and I get 50 cents
my handcrafted jewelry, wearable horns
and more! all hand made
donations through paypal with balance,
check, savings or credit card funds
Snail Mail
M. Turner
Po Box 1484
Elfers, FL 34680
Donations Through Amazon no paypal? no problem. use your credit card privately and securely though amazon.
This, That, The Other In non root-canal news (though it dominates my thoughts of course and thus my journal), it's been a quasi-busy week.
Monday I went in to the temp job to help out J. with some organization. Normally, I cover for K. when I go in. I was supposed to go back in on Wednesday for another couple hours but they cancelled. Poo. Oh well, I did get eight hours out of it so that helps.
J. also gave me a nice surprise. A group of them bought tickets to the Cirque du Soleil show, Varekai, currently playing in St. Pete. Well, J. isn't going to go. So she gave me her ticket. Just gave it to me! Sadly, this means I have only the one and Love can't go but K. and another lady, L. invited me to go with them. I'm excited and nervous. It's sad that I can't see it with Love. And I'm really getting my social anxiety thing about going with people I barely know. But...it's Cirque and she just gave me her $60 ticket for free, so I'm also really excited.
Tuesday I hung out with my mom. She wanted to get me one more thing for xmas and I told her I needed a pair of jeans. Hours later and a dozen stores later, I finally found a pair. No one had any, let alone ones that didn't fit. (Which is the norm for me. Jeans and I don't get along very well.) Found a pair at Express that I'm calling my, "rock star jeans." They fit SO amazingly, I feel ultra cool just wearing them. To show the absurdity in sizing and the lack of uniformity, the ones that fit? Size 2 short. Two! Even I don't wear that small normally. Most of my jeans are more size 5ish. I've even have a 7 in the past due to weird cutting. (Then again, I have a pair of capris I got from Gap last year that are a 4 I think.) You just never know what the size on the tag actually means. It blew my mind though how well they fit. Jeans don't ever fit. The funny thing is that I tried on other 2/short in a few other styles/colors and none of them fit the way the pair I ended up getting did. So even in the same company, the size is different. And the 2/regular? Was way too gappy. Damned weird sizing.
Wednesday I was supposed to go in for a half day but they cancelled. I know it's because the CEO got cranky I was there all day Monday. He just has this firm thing against bringing anyone else in - even temporarily - to help them. Anytime I'm there, he's like, "Oh, I didn't know you were coming in today..." in that snarky way that says he'll be polite to my face but is mad about "wasting" money. He doesn't see how slammed busy K. and J. are nor how far behind they get because they keep things running. You know how it is. If you've ever done the Admin/secretary/assistant thing you understand exactly what I mean.
Turns out it was probably a good thing. My cold - today on day 15 - was really kicking my butt yesterday. Lots of coughing. And I ended up getting a migraine later in the day. With being sick and taking so many other things for that, I've just basically forgotten to take my feverfew for the last two weeks. Ugh. So my first migraine in over two months reminded me how much the feverfew helps and how I'm NOT going to forget to take it again! Heh.
We finished watching season 1 dvd's for Lost last night. Now I'm trying to get my hands on the first nine episodes of season 2 so I can get caught up. Heh. Stupid show. It's addictive. And with EVERYONE talking about it, it's impossible not to read spoilers all the time.
Tonight we're going to get to see our first hockey game of the season! Rand's company has season tickets that they give to the employees and he's got the ones for tonight! Yeah! It's been far too long since I've gotten to see a game in person. What with the whole entire-season-lost thing last year. Nothing like hockey. And especially free hockey! I am SO wearing my new rock star jeans. Heh.
Still have very little voice. Still sick of this cold that will not die. Still worried that it's turning into bronchitis and that I need antibiotics, but...what can you do? No health insurance means no doctor visit.
Got out a big batch of holiday cards last week so everyone should be getting theirs. If you still want one but didn't give me your address yet - even if you gave it to me last year, you need to give it to me again! - this is your final call. Go HERE and post it. It's screened so no one else will see it.
Voice Post (By the way, my cold? From Thanksgiving almost two weeks ago? Yeah. I still have it. But what I don't have is a lot of voice. Thought you might get a kick out of hearing how I sound now.)
What's Done and Not Done - Teeth Update Ok, so I just haven't had time to get into the fiasco from Friday's root canal yet. I'll try to sum as best as possible here then get more into details for the slightly longer version.
The bare-bones status... In short, stage ONE of my root canal is done. The nerves and pulp have been removed and the tooth sterlized. It has a temporary filling on it right now and I'm not allowed to eat on it because it's very fragile. The pain - of course - is gone because I have no nerve in it. The gums were mildly sore Friday but basically fine since. In two weeks (give or take), I'm supposed to go back to the root canal doctor for the other half where they'll take off the temp filling, actually widen the hole they drilled and stuff the root canals full of an artificial material to replace the nerves that used to be there. It's basically plugging the holes. Then I get another temp filling. At which point, I have to go back to my regular dentist right away and get a crown. But not just a normal crown, no. There's some kind of re-building up of the tooth that needs to be done as well as a post of some sort for strength added. (That part alone accounts for $1,526.00 of work.) The root canal dentist's final price was $929 but he's letting me pay that in payments. The primary dentist...I'm not sure what I can do about that. Not getting the crown isn't an option because without the crown, the tooth is too weakened to be used.
And don't forget, I still have THREE CAVITIES on top of all of this that need to be done! Going back from March now! (And of course, as these things go, they're on my right side - two bottom, one on top - and I can currently only eat on my right side because my root canal tooth is top left.)
More Story leading up to and including the root canal... So, the slightly longer goes back a couple weeks. It started hurting pretty bad and I was just enduring it with helps of extra strength tylenol. But I was working on a bracelet order late Thursday-into-very-early-Friday morning when this pain hit me really hard and really fast. I mean, like a truck hit me. I took some tylenol right away but it wasn't enough. I started crying. I couldn't help it. It was somewhere around 2:45am or so. Well, Love heard me crying and woke up. For the next 30-45 minutes, I just sobbed. I was in agony. It was fire and needles in my tooth, cheek and across my jaw. All up along the side of my face. It hurt so bad. I cried and cried because I couldn't not. When it wasn't kicking in, Love got up and got me two more tylenol. It was another half hour of so after that when it finally started to take the edge off. Then slowly work it's way towards center and dim the pain so I could fall - exhausted - to sleep. We decided that I (of course) needed to see the dentist the next day (Friday) to find out what was going on. Neither of us wanted to deal with that again.
Now, Love couldn't take off work and take me because Wednesday and Thursday he was out sick. (Poor thing even picked up conjunctivitis probably from someone at work.) I ended up sleeping a little longer then I planned (but it was because of how drained I was from being in pain and crying so much the night before), so around 10:30am I called my mom. I didn't want to have to call her because her husband is off on Fridays. And he gets very cranky about her doing things on that day - especially if they don't involve his plans. But I didn't have a choice. She said of course she'd come get me. So I called the dentist. First she didn't believe me that I had a tooth that needed a root canal. Kept telling me it only needed a filling. Uh, yeah, lady, you're waaaay behind here. I went for the filling in October and found out I needed a root canal in it. Trust me, I wish I were wrong. Then she told me she couldn't see me until Monday. "Look," I said to her. "I was in some of the worst pain I've ever been in my entire life last night. This is an em-ger-gen-cy and I need to see a dentist, TODAY." She put me on hold and finally said to come in at 1pm and wait for an opening. So I did.
Got in almost right away. They took an x-ray and to my surprise it wasn't abscessed. I was sure for as much pain as I was in that it had to be. Turns out, that there was very little bacteria there. The real problem was the nerve was dying. Apparently nerves can go quietly or they can hurt like mad. Guess which mine opted for? :/ Though it is a back molar, and of all teeth, the "best" one to face removal (read: will cause the least amount of future damage to gums and other teeth, though not damage free), because of my age, they recommended I try to save the tooth if possible. I guess the younger you, the worse the long-term effects of pulling teeth are. Since it wasn't abscessed, they strongly recommended I keep the tooth. Since I really, really, really didn't want to pull it myself anyway, I agreed. (I know some people think it's no big deal, but for me, it's horrifically barberic and I feel very strongly against it as anything but a last resort. I didn't feel I was at last resort stage yet. I have a personal...phobia? of teeth pulling and if I can do anything to keep from having to do it myself, I will.)
So off we went to the endodontic dentist's office.
We get there and I fill out the paperwork and they bring me back. They do the exam and tell me that they can start the root canal right now if I want. I ask about paying it in payments. Initially, they tell me 1/3 today, 1/3 in two weeks and a post-dated check for the last 1/3 after that. Which, there's no way I can do. So I ask to use their phone. I call Love at work. By this point, I've broken down crying. I have my mom yelling at me about wanting to see the specialist in the first place - she'd have me pull out all my teeth I think sometimes for as pro-pulling as she's been about this situation (to the tune of six-non-stop weeks of badgering, messages and emails telling me the "right" thing to do is pull it.) - and I'm just shattered mentally. The stress, the poor sleep the night before, the memory of the pain, facing the weekend and not knowing what was going to happen...ugh. So I'm on the phone with Love for like a half an hour. I couldn't figure out what to do. And I knew we could never pay it off that quickly. I made the decision to just wait. My regular dentist gave me a painkiller prescription to take so I thought I'd get through the weekend and think about what I wanted to do more.
The dental assistant came up to me. She told me the dentist wanted to get me out of pain, let me do the first part right now, and just take what I could pay today. Moving forward, we'd just go with what I could pay. So I decided that was way more then fair of them and at the very least, having the first step done would mean I'd be out of pain and buy myself a few more weeks at least to seriously look at the situation and make a plan. So I took her up on the offer and we went in.
The process wasn't that bad. Uncomfortable but not bad. The worst part was the x-rays they had to take. I have the single worst gag reflex on the planet so it was very hard getting the little wand in place. (They, like my normal dentist, use a digital x-ray now. Way easier and only 10% of the radiation of old fashioned ones.) Went home afterwards. By that time it was around 5:30pm or so. I took some Advil as recommended - it helps cut down on inflamation - and dozed off on the couch. By Saturday, I was fine. No pain at all. The gums had a very slight tenderness to them, but it was far less then the soreness after a filling. I hope the second stage is as light on the pain.
So...now I need to go back to get the next stage done. They normally recommend 2 weeks but I can go 3 or 4 weeks if need be. And basically so long as I pay them every month, it'll be ok. The biggest thing is going to be how to deal with the crown half of the cost.
Of course, all of this is going on in December. Where we have the holiday costs and our rent went up $75 a month starting this month. (!!) Yeah, I know. But I couldn't afford to move so I was stuck. They totally screwed us over. Tack in the on-going problems like the car - who's driver side window broke - and you can see that though I'm temporarily out of pain physically, well, stress and emotionally, I'm no where near out of the woods.
Damn. I've been writing this for an hour now. It's 11:35am. My mom's coming over today so I need to get ready. I have more and other updates - couple days at the temp job, Cirque, order status and jewelry items - but that will have to wait until later.
Needless to say though, it's been a hell of a few days now.
