Poor Marilyn! Oral Surgery Thursday.
There's only ONE thing, really, to report today: Marilyn had serious oral surgery this morning. And, unfortunately, it didn't go as well as we could have hoped (or as I prayed for over and over and over again). Poor Marilyn.
She's had this hanging over her head for months now (since January). She's desperately needed to have the work done and has suffered terribly, but as she knew she'd end up without a front tooth after the work for a period of time, it was really impossible for her to do it before right now. This was HER YEAR -- Parade Queen Year -- and she was everywhere. On TV, in the newspapers and (yes) even on a billboard! She became one of the festival's talking points for 2015. So there was no way it could have been done any sooner...
But, my, she was in really miserable shape last week! She was in terrible pain. The broken tooth on the bottom broke yet again during the week and became more jagged, ripping the hell out of her tongue. Her tongue was so abraded and swollen that she was having trouble eating and talking. And she was having dizzy spells. At one point she warned Jeff that she might need to have someone drive her to the parade on Saturday.
But she's got tremendous guts. She got through the busiest time of our entire year with flying colors. And this morning she DROVE HERSELF to and from the oral surgery over near the Lloyd Center. I was there, but I certainly wasn't much help.
She needed two extractions. The bottom tooth, where she lost the crown around two weeks ago -- and good thing, too, as it had shifted up so that she couldn't close her mouth or chew (meaning she couldn't eat!). And the front tooth that's been calcified since she was young. That's the tooth that had to have multiple attempts at a root canal (three from below drilling up and finally another from above in the gum drilling down). The hope with the front tooth had been to remove it and have enough bone to attach a pin for the new dental implant to be affixed to. He had to saw off the tooth in pieces, just like he had to take out the bottom tooth in pieces -- using the drill on both teeth to get them out.
Then he had to do a bone graft on the front tooth.
He had to numb her several times while doing it. And she had a hard time getting the bleeding to stop after the fact. She was in a lot of pain but couldn't take any medication because of the bleeding. She wanted to avoid vomiting, and if you swallow blood that's almost impossible to do. That's the same reason that she only took ibuprofen for the pain (she didn't even come home with any pain meds), as she's never been able to deal with strong pain medication without being sick.
We actually had to go SHOPPING (!!!) after her oral surgery, because we were just too damn tired to do it last night. She's on soft foods only for a week, so we bought yogurt, tapioca, mashed potatoes, ice cream and jello. She barely had any food all day.
Once home, she just stayed on the sofa with TV on. It was a blessing when she was able to sleep.
It's now after 2:00 a.m. on Thursday night (actually early Friday morning), and I just finished up the garbage and recycling (naturally it's REAL garbage week, sigh...). And I woke her during it, I'm afraid.
She has a meeting next Tuesday morning that she plans to attend. We'll see about that! It's entirely going to depend on how she does this coming weekend.
Oh. On Monday when we were headed to work we find out that Candy and Larry (our niece and nephew) are planning to rush sister Sue to emergency because they think she may have had a stroke! They spent hours at the hospital before finally taking her home again. They finally got her in to see her doctor today. They've ruled out a stroke, thankfully. But the doctor doesn't seem sure what has been wrong. She's been confused and having memory issues for weeks now. Her water weight is up. And later today they let me know that Sue's highly anemic and needs to go back in to the doctor again first thing in the morning. Anemia can cause confusion and a slew of other problems... Anyway, hopefully they can help her.
It's frustrating, because Marilyn and I can't be much help with Sue right now, obviously. And originally it was supposed to be Sue taking Marilyn to her oral surgery, so obviously that couldn't happen, either. (Don't think that MANY, MANY people didn't offer to do so, by the way, including Adeena and June, plus Angel. Marilyn decided she wanted to drive herself, so that's how it went.)
In the GOOD NEWS category, I was iMessaging with my friend June tonight. Her son Jim Jim is able to drive now (!!!), so that's a sign of how much he's improved! What a blessing. It looks like he can go back to work soon.
We're certainly blessed to have our air conditioning during this recent hot spell. That's a blessing we never take for granted, believe me. (We spent much of our lives without it, after all. And we still have issues about it at the beach house, where it's pretty miserable whenever it gets too warm.)
Well, I need to check on Marilyn and get some sleep.
I do plan to go BACK and fill in some of the days I've missed recently -- especially Parade Queen Day, which was really amazing! I was just TOO DAMN TIRED to originally blog. Clearly I've missed several days, so I think that's obvious. Hahaha.
Gosh. I finally have my check waiting for me at the office. I'd sure like to get there to pick it up and stick it in the bank! But I can't reason out how that's going to happen...
Anyway! I hope my next entry is a more positive one. Of course, Marilyn's expected to have a lot of swelling in the next two days -- plus he thinks she'll end up with a black eye, too. I'm praying there won't be any complications or major pain.
More soon...