Tides change

We had a very fun filled and happy fortnight in early August with the festivities and as if by some voodoo, things took a nosedive.

My jaw locked up and started making clicking noises. It hurt when I opened my mouth for anything more than a straw and yawning sent electric shocks into my brain. After going back and forth between the doctors who diagnosed the symptoms as TMJ (and they were not wrong), going through jaw movement exercises, taking lots of Ibuprofens vs.  going to a local dentist who did not do due diligence because my dental insurance was maxed out (he did not even take a new x-ray and told me the same thing the doctors told me!) things were going from bad to worse. 

In the last two weeks I ate such wonderful things as Tomato rasam sadam with Vendaikaai curry smoothie, Poondu rasam with beans paruppusili smoothie, etc. (Rice with tomato soup + okra curry blended into a smoothie..). Was mushing up everything! The taste is okay, but the texture of some of these smoothies, if you could call it that made me lose my appetite. 

My two attempts at shaving also end up in aborted missions and I started to look like this..

The little one agreed to that pose as a "pity pose". She hated that beard! 

Finally we decided enough was enough.. well truth be told Sangeetha decided enough was enough of my moping around and found a dentist through a friend who had a reputation for fixing the problem and not worrying about the insurance! So went there Friday. At first they took an x-ray and called me back to say "you sure there is no pain in this area?" and my response was "pain? what pain? I have been in so much pain that my threshold has moved!" 

So they called me back for more x-rays which confirmed that there was a big area of pus in the place where my wisdom tooth used to exist. They "extracted" the pus and said "you don't need ibuprofen, what you need is antibiotics to fight this infection!" and they were right! In two days the pain was almost gone. The clicking came to a minimum and I could eat solid food again!

Today I made a long and slow attempt and shaved. The whole family rejoiced. Never knew that a little stubble could cause so much sadness in a house. 

Krishna ummachi teased me with all the crunchy stuff at the worst possible time but Pilliyaar ummachi was not going to disappoint. There were no Kozhukattais in the house today but San did make some yummy vadai and paayasam! Was able to eat that just fine.. 

Wanted to take a picture with the kids after eating the vadais! Was reminded that we took a picture just after this moment many years ago and dug it out!

and now..

I can still carry the little one for a little while! 

The only downside is that the molar will be removed tomorrow. I plan to hang it on a necklace as a reminder of the last 17 days of stuggling. 

The jaw seems to be one of those things that literally falls in "no mans land". Doctors send you to dentists and vice versa.. it is in the perfect "punt zone". I also learned the hard way that dental insurance works differently from medical insurance. With medical insurance you hit an out of pocket maximum (2000$ or 4000$ for example) and after that you don't pay anything for that year on anything that is covered. The insurance pays. 

With dental insurance, THEY have an out of pocket maximum. Once the dental insurance has paid their part to a total of 1000 or 1500 $ a year, they stop paying for anything more complicated. So god forbid you end up with two root canals in one year, you pay out of pocket for everything else!

I don't know why we cannot have our regualar insurance cover dental procedures also. Last I knew, the gums, teeth, jaw etc. are all part of the body!

It was not like I was asking them to cure me of baldness! 

The little one did think I looked "cute" even with the beard if , IF the sunglasses went with it! Something to contemplate as a "look" when the hairline goes beyond the horizon on the head..

They say all is well that ends well. Sure hope that this saga comes to an end once the tooth is gone!

Daddy gets a trophy.. among other things!

The blog has seen a long break. It has been a rollercoaster ride for the Traveling Narayanan's if we can say that.

First we had a nice Saturday evening last week with dressing up and going to a temple. Even clicked a gorgeous snap of the little one as she was shy and blushing when I complimented her on her paavaadai (frock).

Then like San says "Don't cast your admiring eyes on her.. bad things happen!" (what she says in Tamil is "kuzhandhaikku un kanne pattudum") and who knows maybe that is true.

San left on a business trip to China the very next morning and she pretty much took the family luck with her. The house has been seeing things like never before to the point where we look like the Indian village after the Sankara stones were stolen from it in the Indiana Jones movie! We need our Sangeetha stone back.. We demand it!

The little one came home Monday with a 103 fever and missed school for most of last week. She also passed on a cold and sore throat to daddy and grandma. Fortunately Jr. avoided her little sister for as much as she could and that saved her.  

To top things off, daddy went to the dentist with pain for the black tooth and ended with a double root canal and a bad prognosis for both front tooth. Apparently the last root canal was not sealed off properly and the black tooth was not black because it was dead. When my local dentist removed the plug, everyone pretty much reeled back from the rotten smell that came out of the tooth, except for me as I was in the chair and could not move my nose away from my open mouth! It was a small logistics problem that no yoga pose can accomplish. There is a 50/50 chance that I will lose both my front teeth in six months or so I am told. If things work out, the tooth will survive and hang in there.

Dentures at 40?! Not so looking forward to that. Again, we need our Lucky girl to come back from China..

Every morning the scene in the bedroom looks like this..

That and a big pile of blankets and comforters that need to be laundered, if the little one decided to throw up her dinner in the middle of the night. I figured that it was better to leave them in a balled up pile and do laundry in the morning than do 3AM laundry. Just got tired of it.. and believe me when I say this.. we do a lot of laundry in this house. Every week we wash 35 towels just for Yoga!

Finally we got to the weekend after making it on a one day at a time mode during the week and there was one bright spot. Yesterday, it was time for Daddy to go get his 60 day Challenge trophy! That was for doing 60 yoga classes in 60 days in Jan, Feb and early March. 

Daddy did make it to almost 73+ classes in 73 days and then it stopped early this week. Well, it will start again.

Jr. took this photo after the little one suggested "Appa, you got a tropy. But you should put a picture of you doing yoga now and show people how well you are doing, before putting the trophy picture". Well, have definitely redistributed weight around, a lot of fat is gone and new muscle is there. I am reasonably sure that if it were not for the Yoga marathon, would have fallen ill a lot more what with all the sickness going around in the house and everywhere in the bay area in general. At one point 8 kids were out sick in the little one's class including her.

Definitely recommend the 60 day challenge to all Bikram Yoga practitioners. We spent Saturday evening listening to the stories of all the folks who finished the challenge and it was truly inspiring. Daddy got to say his story also and he pretty much stopped short of doing a demo, throwing the little one in the air and catching her. There is still a lot to improve if you look at the picture above. Yes, the hamstrings and core are strong enough to lift the body off the ankle, but if you see the symmetry in the shoulders and the legs, it is clear that there is a lot of compensation going on to keep the balance. Well there is a lifetime of yoga left to correct these things. . .

 After we listened to everyone tell their story, there was a raffle and guess what? The kids won the raffle. I say the kids because at one point my MIL was worried about the kids going to bed late and the little one falling sick again.  They both insisted they stay for the raffle and I quote the little one "I think today my luck is going to change. I am sick but we are going to win!" and Jr.'s ticket was the winning ticket! We got a bunch of Yoga goodies as part of the raffle. The shirt which two years earlier would have been two sizes too small.. fits daddy perfectly! 

We really missed Sangeetha at this Challenge party. There was no trophy, if she had not pushed me to go. Three days into the challenge she even said "are you just going there and sitting down for a lot of poses or are you doing your very best?". While she was only kidding, that gave me the idea to track down how many poses I actually miss in the Challenge and was planning on doing one extra class for every 26 missed.  She also took a lot of the pick up drop off duty on days where my resolve was wearing down a bit so I could switch to evening classes instead of morning for a full week.  So technically she gets a tropy for supporting it.

We are just a couple of days away from Mommy's return trip back home.

On a funny note one of her co-workers asked her "I heard you are a vegetable. Is that true?" and she knew the co-worker meant "vegetarian" but was not sure how to answer.

Later in the week when she found out that the little one was sick, she went to some local Lama temple as part of sightseeing and prayed to the local god..

I am reasonably sure that her prayer went something like this "Dear Lama god, please make sure my little one stops throwing up fast. she has been throwing up too long" and the Lama god went "okay.. I got this one. Let me stop. You want the little one to throw up long and fast.. Done!"

It might have done us some good if she had a translator before she went into the temple.

Well, we are counting days and that is all there is to it. Our luck will change when she is back. We know it!

The Chair

The dreaded chair!

Had to sit on it for almost two hours last weekend.

It was not the chair or the usual nonsense associated with it that bothered me.

Have sat on it many times before.. Been there, done that!

We are talking about the Dentist visit here, in case you have not caught on..

This time, they forgot to turn on the water to the drill thingy. Poor me is getting this burning smell from the one nose that is still not numb from the injection (last time it was novocaine, this time the needle said "octocaine".. must be one number lower grade than novocaine!). In spite of the caine downgrade, the mouth did not feel the burn.. The doc figured it out pretty quickly.. called the assistant and said "I think something is wrong.. This thing got extremely hot.. is the water on?" This when the patients eyes are a few inches away from a smoking drill bit that has just burnt some flesh!

They found the water switch, turned it back on and proceeded as though nothing happened. My pain is still there though!

Never listen to a dentist when they say:

"Deep cleaning should be good!"

what they mean is that

"Deep cleaning (your wallet) should be good (for me)!"

Now that all the cleaning has been done, the verdict?

"your wisdom tooth is impacted. We have cleaned everything around it, filled cavities on nearby teeth (which did not hurt me in any way) but still the pain is not going away. So we are refering you to a specialist to get it extracted. It might be a surgery because most of the tooth is in the bone!"

This after the dentist goes "you know it is purely amazing that you have such a big cavity and no symptoms. The more decay I remove from this, the more I see.. this is like Pandora's box!".

I was thinking "Lady, If pandora had the X-ray machine that you used last week to capture my teeth in all its gory detail, she would have never opened the box!".. but because there were a few plastic and metal wedges between my teeth, and a drill a few centimeters above my face, I kept that thought to myself!

Thank you Dentrica!!!! (Dentist in America)

I am soooo looking forward to my next India trip to meet my good old dentist! My faith in the healthcare system has now been downgraded to "Orange". Oh wait, it has always been Orange, like the Security level in the San Jose Airport.. Let me downgrade it to "Red" for a change.

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