Reading several books at once

There's a wonderful interview - all too short - with Joe Queenan about his reading habits.  It appeared in the New York Times recently; John Williams was the interviewer.

What endeared me to Queenan in this interview was his admission that he usually had a large number of books on the go, a manageable 24 at the moment, but up to 80 at one point.  All it requires is a good memory, he says.

I've read books in this way for years.  Over the last several months I mentioned to the young dental student I've been seeing at the Dental School that I usually have several books on the go at one time (24 might be an exaggeration for me).  He was quietly astonished: he had to finish a book before he could start another one, otherwise he'd forget what he'd been reading.  But books are worlds; you enter each one separately and they don't in any way mix themselves up - unless, of course, they happen to be all on the same subject: I've just finished one on stats and everyday life a couple of days ago and I have three others on the same topic; yes, maybe they'll blend together a bit, but that's okay.  It's a way of remembering more about the subject in hand. But books that are very different in style, tone, and subject matter don't get mixed up at all.

And the subject in hand at the moment is: what is a torch lighter?  It's a larger form of cigarette lighter, apparently, and burns at a greater heat than your usual little throwaway model of lighter.  Seems to be particularly used for cigars.   How did I get from Joe Queenan to torch lighters?   Well, via the dental student, who one day, while I was lying in the chair thinking about how many hours I'd spent there this year, he was attempting to light some sort of gas burner nearby, so as to melt some item that was going to be used in the interminable process of setting right one particular tooth in my head (it was to take an impression of some sort).  He couldn't get it to start burning, and had to get one of the dental assistants to come along and sort it out.   I think he would have been more successful with a torch lighter, by the sound of it, though it might have dealt rather too drastically to the material he was working with...!

Dentists and suffering

The dental industry, in its aim to keep things clean and dry and healthy before dealing with taking impressions of a mouthful of teeth (or the lack of them), or in its aim to do other terrifying things to their patients, seem to forget that these things can actually be very traumatic to the people receiving them.  

I don't normally have a great deal of problem with going to the dentist.  I've had so many things done to me over the years that I'm fairly composed, normally, when it comes to sitting in a dentist's chair.  However, over the last few months I've made several visits to the Dental School here in Dunedin, because, as a pensioner, it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to have my teeth attended to when I go there.  I'm very happy that Dunedin has the Dental School - don't get me wrong about that.   But I'm getting a crown replaced - it broke off a couple of months ago due to wear and tear, I guess.  It's taking longer than it would to have it done by a private practice dentist, of course.  That's the way things go at the Dental School.  And the young fellow who's looking after me is doing pretty well, all things considered - he's a fourth year student.  

But today, prior to taking an impression so that the technicians could make a new crown, he did something I don't remember having had done before: to dry the area between the gum and what's left of the tooth (what the crown will hang onto, along with a couple of pins that have been inserted in it) he inserted a tiny tubular-type material in under the gum, like a very small rubber band.  Poking this up into the gum was like having something poked under your fingernail.  I'd had an anaesthetic, so it shouldn't have been sore, but it was very sore.  Worse, two of these tubulars have to be inserted: the first does one thing, the second something else.  (I was a bit brainless by this time, so found it hard to take in what they were actually doing.)   I guess the first kind of expands the gum area so the second one can be held in place to keep things dry.  I'm not sure. 

Anyway, after this had happened, I had the impression-taking device stuffed up into my upper set of teeth for around five minutes; apparently the material that takes the impression doesn't dry quickly.  That was okay - survivable.  

Finally, relief when the impression thingee was removed, and then the two tubular bits.  Except that that supervisor felt that the impression wasn't quite good enough because there was extraneous gum getting in the way.  So...believe it or not...we went through the whole process again after the offending gum was removed - burnt off, in fact.  You could smell the burning flesh.  By this time I'd had two more injections, and being injections into the area that was already sore they were very painful in themselves.   (Perhaps it wasn't coincidental that our church house group last night was looking at suffering!)  I've always tried to avoid anaesthetics if I can when at the dentist; I find they leave your mouth more sore afterwards than if you don't have them.  The pain of the moment is of the moment; when you recover from being anaesthetized, you still have the pain that you didn't experience so much of earlier on.  If that makes sense. 

Anyway, the process started all over, and I was offered still more anaesthetic, but I just wanted every over and done with - Get on with it!  So up into the gum went two more rubber bands, and then the impression thingee was stuffed up again for another five minutes (and if you think I'm exaggerating about the 'five minutes', I'm not).  By this time I was very desperate to get out of that chair and out of the building.  

Why do they need to use these bands?  In the past, as far as I'm aware, they've always cleaned very thoroughly around the area before sticking anything like a crown or a temporary (I'm onto my third temporary for this series) onto what's remaining of the tooth, and that's always been effective.  I've rarely had any problems in terms of infection.  This current idea of stuffing stuff up inside your gum verges on torture that Torquemada would have enjoyed applying.  Even with an anaesthetic, it's painful, and what makes it more painful is having someone tell you to sit still because moving about makes it harder to work.  Okay, mate, let's swap places for a few minutes!  

Anyway, I'm still alive.  I have another temporary stuck in which hasn't fallen out while I was having a meal with some friends tonight.  (Though I was being cautious...)   I could have had the tooth taken right out and be faced with yet another addition to my denture plate, as happened last time something along these lines occurred.  

Count it all joy, my friends, when suffering comes along...says James, though I think he was referring more to people being persecuted for their Christian faith.  One of my questions at the study group last night was, how do we be joyful in the middle of suffering?  If I was supposed to learn how to do it today, I missed the boat, I'm afraid. 

Dental

Being retired and living off a pension isn't too bad as long as you don't have any large bills to deal with. Last year, before I retired, both of us had dental bills that chewed up a good deal of the ready money. Since I've retired we haven't had any dental issues, but the car has done its best to bankrupt us!

Going to the dentist in NZ has always been an expensive business, and it's not surprising many people put it off as long as they can. Roll on the day when it becomes a subsidised part of the economy, as medical care is.

In the States you can get a dental plan just as you can get a medical plan. I suppose it's a better option being able to dripfeed your payments to an insurance company rather than having a horrendous bill foisted upon you, but it's still going to cost. I didn't know there were any similar dental insurance plans available in New Zealand, but apparently there are. Seemingly they're not over-popular with the dentists: it requires them to do extra paperwork and, apparently, may bring them in a lesser income. Dear me - that would be awful!

I've had some great dentists over the years, people I've been happy to pay to have work done. I've also had some not-so-great ones: my first dentist was of the old school that thought that taking teeth out was always the best option, even when you were in your teenage years! Crikey. It must have been the trend at that time. I read the sequel to Plumb recently (it's called Meg). In that there's a scene in which the husband goes out (at the suggestion of his mother) and gets all his teeth removed to save himself future dental problems. His young wife is appalled.

Fortunately that awful dentist didn't manage to remove many teeth, but by the time I got to England in the 60s I was having some real problems with my upper set of teeth, and finished up having to go to a friendly Australian dentist who sorted things out. I can't remember if he was the one who removed some of my upper front teeth, but he certainly was the one who put crowns in - at huge expense. I kid you: under the National Health system in England the whole process cost me no more then ten pounds!

Which might explain why the National Health struggles to make ends meet.

The photo of the young man with lolly teeth was taken by Broken Piggy Bank

Despicable, teeth, health

I went to the movies the other day with my daughter and her son. (Yup, my grandson - you're pretty sharp, aren't you?) The movie, for those who want to know, was Despicable Me, and while it took a little while to warm up, it got itself into a reasonable amusing state by the time it was finished. I think it's one of those movies you need to see again in order to catch up with all the little details that make it interesting.

Anyway I was chewing one of the lollies my daughter had handed over to me and suddenly bit on something that wasn't anything like the jelly texture I'd been throwing around in my mouth. Hmmm...a piece of tooth had broken off. It turned out to be mostly filling when I got it out in the light, and I thought, Okay, that means the dentist can probably just clean it up and cover it over.

Nope. One x-ray later, and the dentist is talking about removing it. Which meant taking casts of my teeth set-up so that they can add another false tooth onto the plate I already wear. At this rate there'll soon be nothing for the plate to hang onto.

Today I've been at home (still on holiday) plateless. Which means the pirate look (gap in the front teeth area) is very easy to display - and very ugly.

While I was on the plane coming home yesterday I finished Tim Parks non-fiction book, Teach Us To Sit Still. I'm not sure where I first came across this - think it might have been advertised on the Book Depository site (did you know that books and magazines are the second most ordered things on the Internet, as far as New Zealanders go? I'm glad I'm not in the book trade anymore.)

Anyway, I'll do a longer review of the book in due course. Suffice to say, it's very well written, full of interesting corners, and metaphors and dreams, but most of all, it presents a picture of a man torn between his two selves (he explains that at one point). The result is that he's in constant pain in his abdominal area. I was interested initially because it was thought at first that he had prostate problems. Seemingly that wasn't the case, but nothing medical seemed to be able to pinpoint what his problem was. The book is about his discoveries in that regard, his 'cures' (not quite cures in the usual sense) and his insights into his own personality. Great reading.

Teeth and Scheherazade

There's been insurance invented for practically everything you can think of, from the ordinary life insurance and mechanical breakdown insurance to extraordinary insurance that covers having to pay for everyone in the clubhouse if you hit a hole in one at golf, or, if you're Mariah Carey, insurance to cover your legs (which seems odd, since it's her voice that people focus on....I think).

As far as I know there's been no insurance taken out by the average parent to cover the loss of their children's adult teeth. Yet this is something most of us experience as some point. You could have partial cover (just the wisdom teeth), or cover for those ones that are most annoying when lost (the molars, or the grinders), or full cover for losing the lot.

Well, be that as it may, in the future there's a possibility that if/when you lose your teeth, you'll be able to grow them again. Yes, you read that right. In The Guardian online this week, Paul Sample writes: "Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be."
"The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth - for example, a molar or an incisor - the bud will form."

Of course it's all going to be too late (and no doubt too expensive) for me. But it will be great for all those people who discover that the wisdom teeth they'd spent so long growing have to come out because they just don't fit. (What was God thinking of?)

And since I've been reminded about this just now - the piece is playing on the radio - does anyone else think that Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade music is one of the most boring in the musical canon, with its constant use of the same 'rolling sea' phrase? It must be tedious to perform. Even its better parts are repeated and repeated....and repeated.