Hello- no need for intros, as this is for friends and family . I highly doubt that anyone else would find my life good reading material. Over the years, JP has told me that I MUST write something, that I really SHOULD at least keep a journal....He's right, of course. Some of the details of our first six and a half years here are fading now. But if I can keep this blog going, at least the next two years won't be lost. And I'm hoping it will be a good way for all you kindly and uncritical folk to keep up with what we're doing over here.
If I have written you an interesting email about some event that has happened here, don't be surprised to see it posted here eventually. If I've written to my Grandad Art ( Hi Art!) about a big mask dance, I have done my best work for him and will not write a whole new version for this blog.
Why am I starting this today? It's because I don't feel up to anything else. I had an emergency root canal yesterday and I feel like I've been punched in the mouth. Yes, we do have dentists here. The one we go to is with a Seventh Day Adventist Mission. They have a very nice, clean clinc here and bring in dentists from South America. Dr. Oliveira was surprised to see me yesterday, as the appointment was for Severin and I had just seen him for a broken tooth last week. I had suffered some-ok, a HUGE amount of pain in the week since I'd seen hom. I thought he could just have a quick look and tell me if it was going to go away on it's own. Nope. It was a second broken tooth- and the nerve was exposed!!!
"You've had this for one week? Most people find an exposed nerve unbearable !"
"Well, I've gotten used to it. You take codeine and ibuprofin and it's not so bad..." I answered. What's unbearable about it? In the Real Heart of America (Nebraska) our motto is "Could be worse". Yeah- the tooth hurt, but it didn't hurt as much as giving birth to a 9 pound baby at home without any pain meds (been there, done that). It was bad, but life goes on...
"You are going to have to have a root canal" continued Dr. Oliveira.
"Fine. I'll make an appointment with your secretary on my way out. We'll do it another day, when you're less tired." I moved to take off the attractive blue paper bib.
"Oh, no! Right now! You can't go around like that with an open tooth! It is much too painful and will get infected. We'll start on this right now!"
Most of you probably know how the rest of this goes- the scraping and pulling and so forth.......
He eventually got is all cleaned out, then put a "bandage" on it. That's what he said.
"A band-aid on my tooth?" I said when I could talk.
"No, a temporary bandage. It's a filling to hold you over until we finish this in 12 days. Your mouth is a mess. You have to take antibiotics, plus more anti-inflammatory medications. When you have no more symptoms, we will finsih the job."
There's MORE?????
Oh well, could be worse. Probably.

So here I am. By the way, I have a lot of broken teeth- but it's not from crunching hard bits of dried elephant meat or mango pits. I tend to grind my teeth under stress and have a very deep bite. One thing that makes me grind my teeth REALLY hard is the idea of going to the dentist...........