25% Dentist, 75% Rabbit Trails

In the continuing effort to be a grown up and take care of my body as best I can I went to the dentist yesterday.  Now, I have to point out that I hadn’t had a cleaning in over a year.  I was supposed to go in Fall of 2015, but Fall of 2015 turned out to be a teeny bit busy with the hospital and doctors and testing and passing out and throwing up and physical therapy and other nonsense.

I was a bit nervous.  With each thing I do for the first time since September 1, 2015 I have to look it up and see if there are supposedly adverse effects with whatever the ‘new’ thing is and having dysautonomia.  You should know that of course there are numerous issues that can come up with having dysautonomia and going to the dentist.  Cleaning is not as much of an issue because there is no Novocain injected, which contains epinephrine (also known as a heart rate increaser).  For those new to this blog, I don’t ever need help with increasing my heart rate.

Another concern is sitting in the waiting room for a while and sitting in the chair for a long time.  Needing assistance standing up may be necessary since sitting for a prolonged time can trigger POTS symptoms and episodes.

Apparently half of those who have POTS develop mitral valve prolapse.  It is important you know if valvular incompetency is present because if it is, antibiotics must be taken before dental work to prevent endocarditis, which is life threatening.  Of course it is.

* I spent almost an hour thinking of where I knew a specific phrase from.  I knew what the words were and that it was funny, but it took me a while to narrow down through my brain of funny comedians, movies and tv shows to locate where I knew it from.  Of course once I figured out what it was, youtube didn’t have that clip.  NOOO!  So, my options were to leave it out all together, tell you about it, or include the entire 2 and a half hour movie.  Damn. Anyways, in the movie ‘Just Married’ with Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy they go to Europe for their honeymoon and get a tiny rental car.  Nothing goes right and they end up driving in a snow storm trying to find any hotel with vacancy.  He asks her how far to the next hotel.  She responds that the next hotel with no vacancy is in 120 kilometers.  He then asks what that is in miles and rather than her just telling him, she tells him the formula to figure it out in miles.  His response in a very, very agitated and annoyed tone is, I’M LEARNING SO MUCH!  Every time I read more about dysautonomia I learn more scary things and I usually end up saying that I’m learning so much!

When I was a little girl my brother played hockey and we did a lot of traveling as a family to Canada, because Canada is where you go when you want to play hockey.  Well, as my brother said, ‘We always knew when we were playing a house team in Spokane we would win, and when we were playing in Canada we would lose.’  This was in the olden days back before we didn’t keep score and everyone got a trophy just for showing up and remembering at least one shoe.  We’re talking way back, when the snack mom of the game  brought delicious things that us sisters always dipped into early because they included sugar and preservatives and were kale and tofu free.  Anyways, we were camping in Penticton for a two week hockey camp once and every single day it was about 147 degrees.  The bank had a reader board that showed the temperature in Celsius.  Every day another hockey dad asked my dad what the temperature was in Fahrenheit.  My dad is an instructor at heart.  It is one of his many great skills other than lecture giving.  Anyways, each day he would explain the formula to convert the temperature.  I can distinctly remember the day that Tim had reached his limit of hearing the formula and cut him off, “look Bob, do you know what the damn temperature is or not?”  Sometimes people just want to know the answer without knowing how you got there.  In the world of POTS I frequently wish they would just say these are the 27 million things it can affect in the body rather than me having to look up each and every new event and symptom to see if that is in fact POTS-related. Spoiler alert: they all are.

Meanwhile, back to the dentist, it actually went very well.  My dentist was sorry to hear about my recent health stuff, but she did thank me for not neglecting my teeth through it all.  That’s right I earned a gold star.  I did tell her though that I had a tooth that was hurting.  Do you know what was wrong with it?  I have been clenching my teeth when I’m in pain and it has changed the shape of my tooth causing me to bite down on the wrong part.  Yes, I am actually biting wrong now.  Good job body, I’ll give back my gold star now.  That’s ridiculous, but at least it was an easy fix and for that I am thankful.

Ok, here are my last few things to note related to this post:

1. Brittany Murphy supposedly had a form of dysautonomia.
2. The campground in Penticton had a pie truck, instead of an ice cream truck.  It would come by in the morning to take orders and bring the pie at dinner time that night.  It was magical and I believe we ate pie every single night.
3. Penticton, British Columbia has a sun dial where you are the dial and your shadow shows the time.  I wouldn’t know this if it weren’t for my mom researching and finding out all of the free museums and fun things to do and see all over Canada, and keep in mind this was in the days before the Google.

I stole this pic off of Twitter to show you although I am sure there is a picture somewhere of me standing on it.  Just pretend this picture has a little sun burned girl on it and it’s basically the same.