A Professional Dilettante

I went to the dentist this morning for a routine examination and cleaning, but he found a non-routine situation, and arranged for me to come back in the afternoon, for, he hoped, a crown and a root canal on one of my lower molars. When I came back, he decided that that wasn’t workable, and that he would have to extract the tooth, and put in a bridge, which he proceeded to do.

After some preliminary work with a drill, he tried several chisel-like devices to remove the bad tooth, periodically putting aside one to try another. It was like struggling to open a tightly sealed jar, or breaking apart some damaged item so that it could be removed and thrown out, except that I wasn’t dealing with a recalcitrant jar lid; the dentist was dealing with one of my teeth. Finally, the dentist was able to pull out the remnant of my tooth, suture the wound, and stuff it with gauze.

He prescribed amoxicillin and Motrin for me. I have started on the antibiotic, but haven’t touched the Motrin. I remember how sore my mouth was after the removal of my wisdom teeth, or after more recent gum surgery, but to my surprise, I’m not in any serious pain.

Thursday evening, I was coming home from the Patent Office, wearing a backpack, and carrying a bag with my laptop and various papers therein. At the Pentagon City station, where I got off, an A40 bus was supposed to come by in nine minutes (according to the display in an electronic sign). A woman told me that it had been supposed to arrive in two minutes, but then that announcement had disappeared. I decided to walk to a bus stop about a third of a mile away, where I might catch an A40 bus or the F-something bus.

I waited a bit, and two other men joined me. We waited, and an A40 bus came by, but didn’t stop; it was very crowded, and did not seem to be taking new passengers. I said that I had had enough, and would walk home. It was over a mile, and the going was rough, as there were patches of cleared sidewalk, patches of snowy sidewalk with an icy crust on the snow, hillocks of snow to claim, and so forth. The temperature was below freezing, and there was wind. I walked and walked, and a few blocks before the sidestreet to my apartment building, I saw two buses come by, an A40 and an F-something.

I finished the walk, and got home after ten o’clock. I wasn’t comfortable, but I think it was just as well that I did walk home, since I was doing something to achieve my goal, instead of standing there stewing, while the possible future arrival of a bus was outside my control.

The Chosin Few would not have been impressed by my endurance.

I have been getting twinges in my feet, leading me to suspect a recurrence of the plantar fasciitis which troubled me years ago, so I have been doing some stretching exercises that I used to do. I hope they help.