Light 'Em Up

Christmas and the holidays were always special to me growing up. As I aged, not so much, but when you have a child, making that magic happen is rewarding. I’m no Clark “Sparky” Griswold (how about that Randy Quaid, huh?), but I have found that I like multi-color lights along the roofline, as well as vintage blow molds. Sorry, but your air-blown Olaf from Frozen that you leave deflated during the day looks like dirty laundry in your yard and is lame. 

In 2014, I went to the hardware store for an after Christmas sale and purchased 13 strands of the classic C7 lights, not the safe LED-style that probably last forever, but the classic glass bulbs that burn your fingers and need to be replaced about once a year. I put them up on our two-story home for the first time in 2015 and quickly learned that you can’t combine more than four strands at a time, otherwise the fuse in the cord blows. And you have no idea which fuse it is, so you have to move the extension ladder to each connection and check the tiny fuse box and it always is the last strand you check without fail.

Then just days after I removed those lights after New Year’s 2016, I was in that near-fatal accident and developed CRPS and my decorating skills for the holidays became limited. Yes, we purchased one of those star shower laser light shows due to my inability to do anything more than insert a plug into an outlet and jam a stake in the ground (as long as the ground wasn't frozen yet). This is mostly because I couldn’t tolerate the pain of standing on a ladder rung, specifically, the arch of my foot. It’s much like stepping on a nail. (Yeah, I’ve done that too.) However, now it feels like an electrically charged nail. It is excruciating and it makes you want to puke. Don’t even get me started on making fists with your toes.

But now I have the DRG stimulator and the pain has been reduced and I wanted to give it another shot. (Last year, our home in Ottawa didn’t have many outdoor outlets and we were figuring out how to pay that $5k rabies vaccine bill, so we never called an electrician to get more outlets. Then we moved to our current ranch home in August and I felt it was time to try decorating the exterior of our home again.)

I got started on Saturday afternoon as my wife and our kid trimmed the newly culled balsam fir we procured the day before at a tree farm in Somonauk. The first climb up the new Little Giant ladder was the most difficult. I still felt discomfort, but it wasn’t vomit inducing. My confidence grew as I became distracted from the pain as I planned every next step. When your mobility is limited and every physical move hurts, you try your best not to waste those movements, like the saying ‘measure twice, cut once.’ The biggest hurdle, after the pain, that needs to be accounted for with having CRPS is weather because it directly affects the pain levels and I couldn’t have asked for a better forecast on Saturday where the high was near 50. I did struggle with my foot drop on the roof’s slope and had to slowly shuffle, but that’s better than a face dive onto the ground from the top of a one-story house. 

I finished the day worn-out physically, but mentally, I was satisfied. I retrieved my wife and daughter to take a look at my progress knowing full well I had more to do Sunday, but I knew they wanted to have a peek. They came outside and I expected the obligatory “good job,” which I got, but they meant it, especially the kid. She lit up. Her enthusiasm and smile melted my heart and I got a little teary-eyed. She then gave me a hug that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Like the season, it was magic.

If You Want to Crown Them, Then Crown Their Ass!

 

I went to the dentist a week ago and I am still reeling from my visit. I received some not-so-good news and I’m having a hard time accepting it.

If you’ve ever had a cavity, then you know that when the hygienist starts poking around the scraper in the same area more than once, you realize there may be an issue. Then, if your hygienist sighs like Marge Simpson multiple times, you know without a doubt, that something is amiss. So after my hygienist, who I will call Allison, finished polishing my teeth and went in search of the dentist to have a look inside my mouth, I tweeted a dumb joke about my visit, because humor is how I cope with bad. After five minutes of Allison’s departure, I started to feel uneasy and I put down my phone and began drumming my fingers on the armrest of the slightly reclined leather dental chair I was seated in. I needed to calm down and to stop fretting. I clasped my hands together, interlocking my fingers to stop the repetitive, compulsive habit and took a deep breath. I looked around the room and began counting the ceiling lights that needed to be replaced. How do they change those bulbs? A pole? Not helping. Then I found myself nervously staring out of the office’s huge plate glass windows at birds, squirrels and chipmunks filling their bellies from multiple feeders that had been placed outside for the patients’ amusement. It’s really an impressive forested view and it is one of the reasons why I like this particular dentist office. Suddenly all of the smaller critters disappeared as a hawk swooped down and landed on the ground. Boss! Have I mentioned that I am fascinated by dinosaurs? Birds are modern day dinosaurs, if you didn’t know. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if the raptor had trapped some prey in its talons, so I tried to get a better look by leaning forward when at that moment the dentist had entered the room and I forgot all about the badassery of nature that I was witnessing. 

Another deep breath. I had never met this dentist. She was the wife of one of the other two dentists that own the practice that normally see me. She grabbed a scraper and Allison called out a number. The dentist clutched the scraper and poked a tooth repeatedly. Then Allison announced a different number and the dentist prodded another area. Then we went through the process again and again. I was ready to call “BINGO!” but as you know, it’s impossible to form coherent words when your facial orifice is filled with foreign objects and yet that never stops dental professionals from asking you questions while they work. The dentist finished and then asked if I had an electric toothbrush. Indeed, I do. I’ve been using them for nearly two decades. She looked surprised. 

“Do you brush twice a day?” she asked. 

“Yes, of course,” I replied.

I even offered up that I floss daily. I really do. (I suppose I did forget to mention I use a fluoride rinse too, but was it necessary? No, she had already moved on.)

She then shared her diagnosis and I was left in disbelief. I need four fillings and a crown. What in the goddamn? I just had my first crown done after my last six-month visit and it wasn’t pleasant. 

I admit it, as a child I was terrible when it came to oral hygiene. It didn’t help that I drank soda and ate candy for meals as if I lived at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

(Remember when Johnny Depp played Willy Wonka and saw his dad, the dentist, who gave him an oral exam and he had perfect teeth? What was that? Why did they remake that Gene Wilder classic? And Johnny Depp as Wonka? I once had an editor who sent me to a film location to try and snap a photo of Depp in Aurora more than a decade ago like I was paparazzi. She, the editor, was a big fan apparently. I missed his face but I did manage to capture his hand as he waved to the small crowd from an SUV behind the Paramount Theatre. They’re Just Like Us!)

By age 10, I already had seven cavities filled all without novocaine. My parents didn’t believe in paying for anesthetics, because, duh, that costs money. When I was 13, I face planted into the gym floor while attempting to block a shot as if I were Dennis Rodman during a co-ed basketball game during P.E. That didn’t go over well with the ladies. (Two years later while pretending to be Chris Chelios this time, I accidentally gave my future wife a black eye with my elbow while playing floor hockey. I’m very serious about winning (check my last name) and that we all should be treated equal, male or female.) Anyhow, I cracked my front teeth in half and the nerves were exposed. I collected my teeth and put them in milk, like it was going to help, actually thinking they could be, like, stitched back in place. It doesn’t work like that. My teeth needed to be repaired with bonding and without any novocaine ($, remember?). I went through hell, so I developed a fear of the dentist. 

Fast forward to my twenties and I was eating fries - you know, that extremely hard food - and I cracked a molar and had to have the tooth pulled. Before the tooth was extracted I was offered and accepted the novocaine since I was paying and it didn’t cost much from what I can remember. Guess what? Anesthetics really helps with the pain. Who knew? From that point on, my dental habits changed completely and I’ve made every six-month visit since I was 23. I even had my wisdom teeth pulled and it really wasn’t that bad. I went 13 years before my next cavity. It was after my accident in 2016 when I developed complex regional pain syndrome, aka CRPS. I didn’t think much of it. I mean, I was sedated with Haloperidol in the ICU for over two weeks with a ventilator tube jammed down my esophagus. Suffice to say, I took a vacation from brushing my teeth. Only having one cavity after that trauma is pretty, pretty good, if you ask me.

Then I had the crown earlier this year and now my current situation of four more cavities and another crown needed is a lot at once. What is going on, I wondered.

That very same day I came home from the dentist, coincidentally, I saw a tweet from a CRPS organization that I follow on the Twitters that states:

“Many people with CRPS develop swollen gums and brittle teeth. Some reports suggest that 75% of people with CRPS have dental issues.”

Look, I understand I haven’t always done a good job taking care of my chompers and I knew eventually I’d pay for my neglect as a youngster, but I speculate that there may be a correlation between oral health and CRPS.