Dentistry means pain, means stay away, means lots of money, my partial made by my dentist, Doctor Wind, he operates, veins filled with sunlight, pools of blood in the sink, a sink once the standard contraption to spit in before the present suction device that dangles from my mouth, that and the spigot blowing air, suck and blow, blow and suck, my gums need irrigating, another trip to the hygienist, how long will it be before I learn good hygiene? go for those gums, let the hygienist rag me about taking care, using better tools, the rubber-tipped doodah to get into the space between the tooth and gum, work it along the gum, bleeding means work harder on this cleaning technique, get that plaque, get those gums rubbery, rubber gums, need to get between those teeth, floss and rub, use a Christmas tree brush, a brush at either end, scrub those gums, get those bacteria on the move, septic, halitosis in those gums, germs from a lifetime of eating, kissing, sucking, germs from every girl and boy I've kissed, added together, gumfulls of funk added to a mouthful of sugar meat vegies carbs and drink, making some kind of solvent to dissolve the tartar from the toughest tooth, deconstruct, not many teeth left, well more than my friend Lu, he and I have tooth decay in common, losing our uppers, molars gone, working forward toward the incisors, chewing with my front teeth, grinding them down, need that partial, still have a couple of anchor teeth, special fitting, high dental art, the final step in several years of getting my mouth in shape, root canals, old caps and fillings removed, new caps installed, gold, porcelain, should I get a diamond installed in this incisor? American flags in fashion today, not until my mouth is stable, keep the jaw line in shape, until the mouth has a constitution, teeth are the duly elected representatives of the entire digestive system, the mouth connected to the throat connected to the stomach attached to the colon attached to the nether mouth, causal chain loop, the system representative of a living organism, a complex eater being eaten, $1200 that tooth, $800 this tooth, $1000 for that one, $1600 for a bit of reconstructive surgery, nip and tuck of dental finance, could you make my new tooth coffee-colored like the rest of them? No, let's not cap it, just a filling for now, Doctor Wind a little on the expensive side, but I get what I pay for, a dental program, remembering a dentist who cut the wrong roots, midnight dentistry in a Berkeley free clinic, the equipment on the blink, me having to steady the x-ray machine by holding it in my hands, probably jiggled the picture to the wrong tooth, took a picture of the wrong tooth, later, infection, abscess, anesthetic, tooth removed from the side of my gum, flashing on dentistry around the turn of the 20th century in San Francisco in Von Stoheim's film, Greed, based on Frank Norris's novel, used chloroform or pulled the tooth without, maybe drank a little whiskey or took a toke on the opium pipe, just handle it, I remember getting novocaine as a kid in the late 40s, and the drills running on a motorized pulley affair, grinding away, today's air-powered drills get the job done, no sweat, so I can usually get a tooth drilled without novocaine, hate novocaine, cottonmouth coming on long after you've left the dentist's office, screw the painkiller, except for maybe a root canal, feels so fine when the drilling's done.
After having the radioactive seed implantation, I was feeling bruised and glowing wildly and needed healing vibes from everyone, but now, after some weeks, I feel less oppressed having cancer, and I'm released from the constant deliberation of the should I shouldn't I wait and see mental games going on in my head. The operation was really no worse than a kick in the groin with a steel-toed boot, I hardly noticed, and yesterday, I went down to my bone doc and had him remove the pins from my right ankle, which were placed there after I broke both legs. No excuse now for not being able to sit in the full lotus.
Funny thing, he gave me a few local anesthetic shots around the ankle, but then he couldn't find his screwdriver. I told him it would be ironic if I had to go out to my car and get my Philips head screwdriver. He said his screwdriver was special, but that a small Allen wrench would do, and he finally borrowed his office partner's instrument and went to work. Got them right out of there, and I couldn't feel anything, although the idea of little screws being screwed out of my ankle made me twitchy, so I got on a passing cloud shaped like a Garuda bird and flew to Tibet, while they worked, the nurse giving me a count down, there's number 2, one more to go, squit, squit, squit sounds, very small threads, squiddle, squit, ik. Whoa, I felt that one, but keep going.
Not much of an incision, so once the screws were removed, I hardly cared about the radioactive seeds, and I did pass a seed, must've made it down a little passageway in the prostate, caught it in my handy radioactive seed screen and put it in my personal lead-lined pillbox, very Doctor Tellerish.
Went to the urologist this morning, who told me I'm doing fine, I had a list of questions, are the rivets in my jeans picking up radioactivity? No. Told him that I showed the seed I passed to a friend, will that hurt them? No. I got more radioactivity with the x-ray when I got my pins removed, I told them I was becoming very concerned about all this radioactivity, so they covered me with a lead jacket. Am I being overly cautious? Yes? How many times did you insert the needle with the seeds? About 2 dozen, how many seeds did you plant? Over 100. Did you put some extras around the tumor? 2 or 3. Are the effects of the hormone treatment going to conflict with the radioactivity as it relates to getting an accurate psa reading? Probably, so we'll wait 3 months to get a blood test, anything else? Oh, yes, said the doctor, remember, I wasn't sure exactly what a curie was? I checked, a curie is a unit of radiation determined by disintegration, 3.70 X 10 to the tenth power per second, named after Madame Curie.
One of my heroines, I say, did you ever see that movie where she and her husband make a vat of radioactive soup and distill the radium until they have a lump that glows in the dark? No, says the doc, I don't remember seeing that movie, however I asked the guy from oncology how much a curie was. That little guy with the mustache? Yes, right, I asked him, and he said, one curie is a lot, that we use microcuries, small amounts that are decaying fast, but you knew that, I bet, you have such an analytical mind, Jubal.
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