I knew this was going to be a different visit to the dental office when the good doctor told his assist, “Can you go get the diagonal bit for me?” Actually I knew since my check-up a month ago that this day would come: my first filing. Despite my diligent efforts to keep my teeth clean (brushing several times a day, flossing nearly daily), a fancy gadget during my last visit identified two teeth in need of filing. It ruined my day.
So there I was, getting my first fillings. Before we got into it, I asked the dentist what I could do to prevent cavities. The answers were, unfortunately, not very helpful. He explained the difficulties in cleaning the molar surfaces (where these cavities were) and said there wasn’t a lot more that could be done more than diligent brushing. Unlike some other dentists I’ve had in the past, he wasn’t super excited about the electronic toothbrushes (Sonicare or Oral B) but said they do help. Sigh.
The procedure got off to a great start. The fancy gadget used to test my teeth for cavities tested negative on one tooth this time which meant fewer fillings (and a chance to redeem myself). Though I have never had a painful dental experience, I think I inherited our cultures fear of dental work that morning and was apprehensive. I had nothing to fear. A topical anesthetic masked any pain associated with the injection that numbed up half my mouth. When my mouth was sufficiently immune to any prodding and poking, the dreaded drill came out. For the next fifteen or so minutes (longer than it took for the anesthesia to do its magic) I had four hands in my mouth, each with a tool. The dentist and assist hardly communicated at all; it seemed a very routine procedure (no surprises = a good thing).
In about 45 minutes or so, it was all done. The assistant said the filing sets up immediately so I could eat right away. Well, almost right away; until the anesthesia wore off, there was no way I was going to be able to chew straight, much less taste my food. I ended up having to wait nearly three more hours before I felt comfortable eating without risk of biting my lips, cheek, or tongue. No residual pain, no difficulty chewing. Now all I have to do is stay on top of the brushing and hope we won’t have to do that again any time soon.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Fun New Word of the Day
"Bridezilla."
I heard an interview with a gal in the midst of planning her own wedding use this term. Her definition was simple: if you use the phrase "Its my wedding!" to make sure you get what you want then you are a bridezilla.
I wish I would have known this term these past few years when it seemed I was going five or six weddings per year; it would have come in handy.
(By the way, the interview was on my favorite personal finance radio show, American Public Media's Marketplace Money.)
I heard an interview with a gal in the midst of planning her own wedding use this term. Her definition was simple: if you use the phrase "Its my wedding!" to make sure you get what you want then you are a bridezilla.
I wish I would have known this term these past few years when it seemed I was going five or six weddings per year; it would have come in handy.
(By the way, the interview was on my favorite personal finance radio show, American Public Media's Marketplace Money.)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I'm Fat
There’s no two ways about it; I’m fat. By any measure I can think of, any website I check, any “authority” I can dream up, I’m overweight. I’ve even gone as far as to ask my male friends who are roughly my height how much they weight and invariably it is at least 20 lbs less than I do.
In Idaho I biked to and from work nearly everyday. This definitely helped me stay relatively fit but even then, I always had a layer of squish around my waist and I never weighed less than 185 lbs. I think people thought of my as “healthy” and maybe I was but compared to my roommates who could out-run, out-climb, and out-bike me; I never felt it. I also didn’t compare favorably with my immediate family in this department; I am easily the least athletic and most pudgy of my siblings.
In early fall of 2005 I had a back injury that eliminated virtually all activity in my life. Though I had been bicycling to work, I was forced to quit and spent most evenings after work laying down trying to mitigate the pain. Through physical therapy and a few steroid injections, I gradually regained some degree of activity in my lifestyle but didn’t jump back into it quickly. I had grown used to do doing nothing but lying around and any benefit from years of bicycle commuting was quickly being erased. By the end of the summer in 2006, I had finished up with physical therapy and was probably back to 80%. I still couldn’t bike to work, though, and didn’t lead an active lifestyle outside of the back exercises I continued to do at home.
It wasn’t until a chance meeting with a scale late that fall showing me at 214lbs that I decided I needed to do something about this. I brought this topic up with my wife and, due to her own fight with familial weight problems, agreed that we needed to do something about it. We read books. We started exercising together. We became more careful in what we ate. And we lost weight. Not in the cataclysmic volumes that the books said but we both noticed that we left healthier and weighed less.
Then Christmas came and though we didn’t gain any weight, we didn’t loose any either. Due to a lot of factors, we reached a plateau of sorts and both of us have felt that we are still a good ways from where we need to be. After talking this over again and trying to figure out the best thing to do, we’ve decided to take things up a notch. We’ve developed an exercise schedule that is more active and we’re trying to find ways to measure the level of activity during exercise. We’ve decided to attempt a super disciplined approach to what we eat by weighing and cataloging ALL that passes through our mouths. We’re hoping that by measuring more carefully the food we eat and our level of activity we will be able to more clearly see where the faults in our lifestyle lie.
The catch in all of this is that it will require a high degree of discipline, one that we aren’t used to enacting in this area of our lives. Some would say that this regimented approach is simply setting ourselves up for failure and that most people aren’t able effectively stick with a program like this. Those people are probably right. My wife and I have discussed this at length and agree this will not be easy. But then again, for us, leading a healthy lifestyle never has been. If it was easy, we wouldn’t need to do this.
So this is where we start, again. This week has been a practice week of sorts where we are on our new exercise routine and beginning to weight and measure our food portions. Next week, we begin it for real.
If you believe in luck, then wish us luck.
In Idaho I biked to and from work nearly everyday. This definitely helped me stay relatively fit but even then, I always had a layer of squish around my waist and I never weighed less than 185 lbs. I think people thought of my as “healthy” and maybe I was but compared to my roommates who could out-run, out-climb, and out-bike me; I never felt it. I also didn’t compare favorably with my immediate family in this department; I am easily the least athletic and most pudgy of my siblings.
In early fall of 2005 I had a back injury that eliminated virtually all activity in my life. Though I had been bicycling to work, I was forced to quit and spent most evenings after work laying down trying to mitigate the pain. Through physical therapy and a few steroid injections, I gradually regained some degree of activity in my lifestyle but didn’t jump back into it quickly. I had grown used to do doing nothing but lying around and any benefit from years of bicycle commuting was quickly being erased. By the end of the summer in 2006, I had finished up with physical therapy and was probably back to 80%. I still couldn’t bike to work, though, and didn’t lead an active lifestyle outside of the back exercises I continued to do at home.
It wasn’t until a chance meeting with a scale late that fall showing me at 214lbs that I decided I needed to do something about this. I brought this topic up with my wife and, due to her own fight with familial weight problems, agreed that we needed to do something about it. We read books. We started exercising together. We became more careful in what we ate. And we lost weight. Not in the cataclysmic volumes that the books said but we both noticed that we left healthier and weighed less.
Then Christmas came and though we didn’t gain any weight, we didn’t loose any either. Due to a lot of factors, we reached a plateau of sorts and both of us have felt that we are still a good ways from where we need to be. After talking this over again and trying to figure out the best thing to do, we’ve decided to take things up a notch. We’ve developed an exercise schedule that is more active and we’re trying to find ways to measure the level of activity during exercise. We’ve decided to attempt a super disciplined approach to what we eat by weighing and cataloging ALL that passes through our mouths. We’re hoping that by measuring more carefully the food we eat and our level of activity we will be able to more clearly see where the faults in our lifestyle lie.
The catch in all of this is that it will require a high degree of discipline, one that we aren’t used to enacting in this area of our lives. Some would say that this regimented approach is simply setting ourselves up for failure and that most people aren’t able effectively stick with a program like this. Those people are probably right. My wife and I have discussed this at length and agree this will not be easy. But then again, for us, leading a healthy lifestyle never has been. If it was easy, we wouldn’t need to do this.
So this is where we start, again. This week has been a practice week of sorts where we are on our new exercise routine and beginning to weight and measure our food portions. Next week, we begin it for real.
If you believe in luck, then wish us luck.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Bicycling to Work
For the first time since my back injury, I bicycled into work today. Well, that's not quite true. This past Sunday I did a trial run in the evening to get a feel for how long it would take. That trip was 97 minutes round-trip with a few minutes break in the middle at work. The route I took was non-ideal (despite some of it being officially a bike path) and so today I tried a different, more residential route. You can see the two routes here. My time bicycling to work today: 39 minutes. I don't think I'll be able to bicycle everyday but the success from today makes me think this should be a pretty vialbe form of exercise.
The main difficulty will be the fact that Cessna's eastside gym (the Cessna Activity Center) doesn't open until 8am and there really isn't a good way to get between it and the office. Result: I'm giving myself "washcloth showers" in the handicap stall before work. When I bicycled out to the west-side facility, the gyn was right across the street and was open by 6:30am when I arrived. Those were the days.
The main difficulty will be the fact that Cessna's eastside gym (the Cessna Activity Center) doesn't open until 8am and there really isn't a good way to get between it and the office. Result: I'm giving myself "washcloth showers" in the handicap stall before work. When I bicycled out to the west-side facility, the gyn was right across the street and was open by 6:30am when I arrived. Those were the days.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)