The Dentist Adventure

More than a root canal

 

You may recall we interrupted out last posting when Mrs. T returned from the dentist.  Here is the adventure that she had.  (Apologies to our neighbors who have heard all this already.)

 

 

 

Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. (NB)

 

I had told my friends that I was getting pretty good with Spanish.  Not that I spoke correctly or fluently (I would never claim that!), but that I almost always could get my point across.  When I limped home from my planned root canal Chuck piped up, "Your Spanish is not nearly as good as you thought!  You went to get your tooth fixed and they fixed your leg instead!"  Oh Well.

 

What happened was this.  I was sitting in the dentist's office minding my own business and thinking of the film "Marathon Man,"   (R does not like to visit the dentist.  dt) when the men came to install a new glass door.  We had watched them remove the old door on a previous visit.  I was watching in a desultory way as they attached the bottom part. They were trying to attach the top part when the glass shattered. A shower of glass pellets fell on my right leg.  Ouch!!

 

I was looking at my leg in surprise when after the shock of pain the red came.  First a drop here and there then a trickle, another trickle, and suddenly my whole leg was covered with blood.  About this time the lady sitting beside me started to shout.  "OH NO!!!  THIS IS HORRIBLE!!!  LOOK AT THIS!!"  I turned to see how she was faring and saw two tiny drops of blood on her leg.  I looked down at my own leg, where blood was dripping steadily into a small puddle on the floor.   "OH NO!!"  the lady started again, I turned to her and gave her what Dan (I wasn't there.  dt) describes as my sad cow look (isn't he poetic!) thinking I may have to sit here bleeding but do I have to listen to you too?  She immediately shut up.

 

I looked at my leg again, I thought of my first aid training.  "What should I do?" I wondered.  I saw no blood gushing, no arteries, good, I thought.  I should sit still, I thought and not move or get excited so the blood will flow slower.  I started Yoga breathing.  "When I breathe in I am calm," I thought.  When I breathe out I …  The breathing out thought was supposed to be  "When I breathe out  I smile."  But frankly I did not think I could do the smiling.  "When I breathe out I am still calm," I thought.

 

People were scurrying here and there.  After a short Spanish discussion I did not try to catch, one of the dental assistants rushed out.  "Hold her leg up!" Dr. Adrian, the dentist, commanded.  One bent beside me and carefully lifted my leg to a horizontal position.  She began to gently brush the glass off my leg.  YEOUCH!!  "STOP!!" I yelled.  I knew she did not speak much English.  "Vidrio es aqui!" I explained.  I could not think how to tell her that some of the glass was still stuck in my leg but whether she could figure out what I meant by saying glass is here or not.  In any case, she stopped.

 

"When I breathe in I am calm," I thought, "When I breathe out I am calm."  A person swept some glass off the floor.  They brought a five gallon bucket and put a sofa cushion on top of it so I could rest my leg on that.  The receptionist (who speaks English fairly well) told me they had sent for a doctor and he would be there soon.

 

"When I breathe in I am calm," I thought, "When I breathe out I am calm."  Dr. Adrian's brother, Dr. Mauro, who is a regular doctor had his office about a block away.  Before long Dr. Mauro came.  "Are you in much pain, lady?" he asked.  "OH THIS IS SO AWFUL!!" screamed the lady sitting next to me.  I stopped right in the middle of yoga breathing and turned to give her my official patented If looks could kill glare.  She shut up immediately. 

 

Dr. Adrian took the other lady firmly by the arm and pulled her away saying "Why don't you stand over here so the doctor has room to help Rebecca."  Then he gave her a few good hard slaps.  Just kidding about the slaps but it was a lovely thought.  Dr. Mauro came closer, "Are you in much pain?" he asked again.

 

"No, es muy malo, pero vidrio…"  I stopped, trying to think how to tell him that some glass was still stuck in my leg.

 

"Speak English, Lady," Dr. Mauro said.  I felt an immediate urge to kiss him.  You may have been wondering why I was trying to speak Spanish to a doctor who was speaking to me in English.  All I can say is I was stressed.  So I explained to Dr. Mauro that although it did not hurt too badly, I knew there was at least one piece of glass still stuck in my leg.

 

"I don't think this is quite as bad as it looks," Dr. Mauro said comfortingly.  I looked at my leg, it looked pretty bad.  "First I am going to spray this anesthetic on your leg, it will sting," Dr. Mauro explained.  It did sting! But then it began to feel numb.  Dr. Mauro was using Dr. Adrian's stuff.  One of the dental assistants was helping him.  "Now I am going to spray some antiseptic on you leg," said Dr. Mauro.  And he did.  "Lady, you have been very brave, but I don't want you to be brave now.  I am going to wash your leg and I want to tell me any time it hurts."  So Dr. Mauro slowly washed my leg looking for pieces of glass that were still embedded.  He found three.  Then he carefully taped together the biggest wounds.  There were about fifteen. But none of them were deep or needed stitches.  (Thank God for safety glass!!)

 

By this time it was time for my root canal.  "Do you think you still want a root canal today Rebecca?" Dr. Adrian asked. 

 

"After all this a root canal is nothing," I replied.

 

"WHAT ABOUT MY LEG?"  my seatmate demanded.  Dr. Mauro looked her over disdainfully.  "You can follow me to my office I will look at you there."  So after my root canal was over my lag was wrapped in an elastic bandage and I was ferried home.

 

Dan was quite impressed and has recorded my recovery in photographs.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157612563682656/

 

 

Well, Mrs. T has been visiting Dr. Mauro almost daily for inspection of her cuts.  She had improved enough to go scuba diving yesterday.  But boogie boarding is still not in the offing.  As you can see her wounds were indeed impressive; she looked like she had been hit with buckshot.

 

 

You may note the pictures of the impressive iguana that Crystal caught.  Crystal jumped in the pool when the iguana headed that way to escape our maid.

 

And we now are using Skype here.  If you have a Skype name, let us know.  And for those of you not in the US, we can now call your regular phone cheaply – send us a number and we may indeed give you a call.  It was wonderful to talk to BN and JRS.

 

As always, you can read previous postings at:

 

http://www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com/

 

Best wishes to all.

 

Dan and Rebecca

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Breaking News

 

Last evening Mrs.T had a very enjoyable time attending the visiting circus in Puerto Vallarta with our neighbor Chuck.  Unfortunately today she is at the dentist for a root canal.  In the past you have heard us speak of the high quality of health care here, and Dr. Adrian the dentist is certainly as good as anyone in the US.  Mrs.T's tooth adventure began a week ago when she was eating some hard candy and one of her several crowns fell out.  We were able to see Dr. Adrian rather quickly – it was even busier than usual at his office as they were removing the double glass door - and after a preliminary exam he determined that the tooth had decay and that it would need further work and the crown could only be temporarily attached.  Indeed, temporary was a short time as the crown fell out later that day as R was eating an avocado and shrimp salad.  Today Dr. A's endo specialist is in town to do root canals and related work.  Thus, Mrs. T is there … we interrupt this to announce that she has returned from the dentist with an even more exciting story that she will report in the next installment.

 

So we will continue with some of her latest adventures:

 

We had an official meeting to incorporate the condo.  There is a specific way you do this in Mexico (Probably in the US too but I wouldn't know).  Most of the owners were not there but there were a lot of proxies some for Luis and some for Dan.  At the meeting were Luis and Joannes, both essentially trilingual although Luis is better in Spanish and Joannes is better in English.  I was sitting between Dan who was pretending he didn't understand Spanish and a Mexican owner who was pretending he didn't understand English.  About halfway though the meeting I finally figured all this out and stopped trying to explain.  They both may not have been able to speak very well but they knew what was going on.  Well the upshot is that Dan was elected president of the condo association (Maybe, I think I was just president of the meeting.  dt)  and the Mexican owner, Ulysses, and I are the vigilance committee.  This means we can stick our noses in anything and ask what is going on.  I warned them that they might regret having Dan be president because he is pretty bossy but they ignored me or pretended they didn't understand me as the case may be.

 

I went to the unfinished furniture store (Muebles Rustico) and bought another bookcase and two little tables to match the bookcase in our spare bedroom.   They come with carvings on the wood and I paint them with my oil paints.  With the new mixer, the widescreen TV, the new microwave, and this furniture the condo is shaping up nicely.  We have a renter already for April who we hope will also stay for May and June.  The long term renters are best from our standpoint.

 

I went snorkeling with two of our neighbors Crystal and Dianne.  We took bananas to feed the fish.  They were mostly king angelfish and chubbs.   We found that if we held the bananas out the fish would nibble from the end.  This worked pretty well until Dianne was holding out the banana and a large chubb came along long and took the whole thing (Why do you think they are called chubbs!)  At any rate we had a good time.  On the way to snorkeling we saw the Indian pole dancers.  These swing slowly around upside down tied by one foot. Slowly unwinding from the top about 150 feet in the air and descending to the ground while hanging upside down playing their flutes.  I am unsure exactly what all this portends but anyway we watched them do it.

 

My favorite dive shop is dissolving is a disagreement between the two owners.  Because of this my favorite divemaster Alex is starting his own shop with a Canadian lady, Donna.  This is a bad time to start a tourist type business but I hope they make it, and right now it works for me because I am diving with Allex every week.  This week we dove at Las Mariettas and went through a cave which had an opening to the sky.  There the waves splashed through the rock and fell back down on thin rock shelves making music that sounded like marimbas, it was amazing, this music of the sea!   We were swimming along underwater looking at fish and suddenly the sea darkened and we saw a cloud above us.  It was a school, no a veritable college of bat rays.  On the way out to the islands we saw three groups of whales and a sea turtle.  When we came to the third group of whales, I heard the divemasters and the captain muttering in Spanish whether to stop or not.  "We better stop," one of them said, "the more whales the better the tips."  I was glad they did because one whale came up about 30 feet from our boat.  Let me tell you whales are BIG!!  On the way back the wind had picked up and it was pretty rough.  The captain rearranged us to get the weight even.  In these situations I always sit on a bench in the back of the boat in the center.  In fact he was moving all of the passengers further back in the boat.  Keep those engines down in the water and the bow up I always thought.  However as I sat getting splashed by every wave, another thought occurred.  Perhaps I am not merely a weight but also a makeshift screen for the captain (Emilio) who stood directly behind me steering!  We had gotten about a third of the way back when I heard Emilio mutter, "I see a bunch more whales but I'm not stopping!"  In spite of the cold return it was a good day diving.

 

Here are some new pictures relating to the above and some other items:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157612563682656/

 

I can also report to you that baking bread on a grill is a challenge.

 

Happy Valentine's Day.

 

Keep in touch.

 

Dan and Rebecca

http://www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

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