I went to the dentist to get a cavity filled and a leaking filling replaced. Total cost was about $100, including 2 x-rays. I got there late in the day, so the dentist examined me, then told me to come back the next day to get the fillings. By the way, how often can you find dentist who will give you an appointment for fillings the same day? The dentist looked very young to me, and when she took the x-rays, she had me sit on an office chair in one corner of the treatment room. There was no shielding, and she didn't wear a lead apron. I know modern dental equipment is much safer than it used to be, but she seemed so young, the teacher gene in me got activated, and I had to tell her the story of my childhood dentist and hero, Dr. Paul Atkins. Dr. Atkins was a man of many talents. He directed an all volunteer brass band in Des Moines, Iowa for many years and looked like John Phillip Sousa when he was in his director's uniform. Dr. Atkins did some of the first research on why some farm families had excellent teeth and never got cavities, while other families had soft teeth that needed constant filling. He analyzed the chemicals in the well water, and found that there was always some form of fluoride in the water of the families with good teeth. The Polk County Health Department raided his office regularly because he was experimenting with very diluted solutions of Sodium Fluoride, an extremely deadly poison. We went to the dentist every 3 months when I was a kid. Dr. Atkins gave us all fluoride treatments, and we used a rinse every day that he made himself. Dr. Atkins did not use cheap ingredients, and insisted on pure peppermint oil for the flavoring. Dr. Atkins took cruises to Hawaii every year, and he showed slides of his latest trip on the ceiling of his office while he was working on your teeth. He was a high tech guy in a low tech time. He had a Webcor reel to reel tape recorder and a sound track for each slide show that was synchronized with the slides. He was also something of a "character." His best friend was a pediatrician, and in that day, tonsillectomy was the treatment of choice for kids who got sick a lot. I missed most of first grade due to toxic tonsils, and when Dr. Folk got tired of coming out in the middle of the night to give me a shot of penicillin, I got mine taken out. And now, back to our story...Dr. Atkins decided he was tired of being sick all winter and that he needed his tonsils out. He asked his friend to show him the instrument he used to take out tonsils. Apparently it had a loop of very thin wire that went around a tonsil lobe and a spring loaded mechanism that pulled the wire tight and cut off the tonsil when the doctor pulled a trigger. Dr. Atkins closed his office early one day and using his dental mirror, cut out one of his tonsils. The mail man saw him lying on his office floor in a pool of blood, and thought he had killed himself. They battered down his office door and took him to the hospital, where he recovered nicely, but he never had the other tonsil taken out. I think the hula girls in Dr. Atkins' slides are probably responsible for my love of brown skin and straight, black hair. Dr. Atkins died when he was 84 from exposure to x-rays. Because he was a high tech guy, he started using x-rays as soon as they were available and the early machines were not shielded properly. I gave the dentist a short version of the story and asked her if she had ever thought about the possibility of x-ray exposure being bad for her health. I thought she was going to cry, so I apologized and told her my teacher gene gave me a compulsion to share information, if even remotely applicable. She told me her shielding was low tech and awkward, and that she knew she should protect herself better. Apparently showing concern for someone you just met doesn't happen too often here. Grace and I discussed how old the dentist was. I was thinking mid twenties, and Grace said she was 32. When we came back the next day, the office assistant told us that another dentist would do my fillings because the one who had examined me got sick and could not come in to work. Dr. Atkins never used Novocain unless the filling was very deep and he suspected the filling could evolve into a root canal. I was somewhat surprised when the dentist we went to after Dr. Atkins died always used Novocain. So, for the last 50 years, every dentist I've seen has used anesthetic when doing fillings. Imagine my surprise when the dentist, an even younger looking woman, started drilling without giving me a shot. It didn't really hurt, but when she got done, I felt like I had been throwing hay bales on the wagon all day. Grace asked the office assistant, and the first dentist was indeed 32, while the one who did my fillings was 25. I am guessing that the first dentist came down with some really nasty virus, because Grace and I have both been sick for the last three days. I had a temp a little over 101, after conversion...our thermometer only displays Celsius. I slept almost all day yesterday. The virus was a strange one. We both felt terribly tired and needed to sleep a lot. When we first started feeling better, we found that the urge to pee would come on suddenly, and we didn't dare try to wait because we had no control of the muscle that prevents "accidents." Those strange symptoms and the fever were all the bug did to us. No congestion, coughing, or intestinal malfunctions. I had my H1N1 flu shot along with the local varieties, and the symptoms don't really match any "flu" I've read about. Grace got sick first, and I took care of her, then I got sick, and she took care of me. I was sicker, and she did a lot more taking care of. I seem to be OK now, but I put her to bed early because she still had a low grade fever tonight.
I have an appointment at the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday to swear before a Counselor Officer that I'm legally divorced and have not married anyone since my divorce. He fills out a form and notarizes it. The form is required to get a marriage license. After we have the form, we have to go to City Hall to get the license, then we have to wait 10 days before we can see the judge and get married. We are planning to go to Puerto Galera sometime after we get married. Grace thinks it might be a good place for us to live. We both want to get away from Manila. An undeveloped beach town seems like a good place to me, and they have a yacht club, so maybe I'll be able to get in some sailing. Diving is the big attraction, and the coral there is still healthy. Grace and I agreed that snorkeling was probably all the deeper we wanted to dive.
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