I haven't posted this week because I've been preoccuppied with a health issue. I have a lump on my jaw. My mouth has been bothering me since the first of the year and I had root canals performed on three teeth. When that was done, my teeth still hurt, so I was put on a course of steroids. They provided tremendous relief to my arthritic pain and made me feel so much better, I forgot about my mouth. This past weekend, I admitted to myself that my jaw/teeth were still hurting, and I started feeling around to locate the source of the pain. On my lower right jaw, I discovered a bony lump about the size of a flattened marble. So, I made an appointment with my dentist and saw him Monday morning. Nothing showed in the x-rays he took. He thought it might be a stone lodged in a saliva gland and recommended that I suck on lemon drops to promote salivation and possibly dislodge it and to make an appointment with an ENT. Have you tried to buy lemon drops lately? I couldn't find any, but scooped up several kinds of sour candies and some actual lemons. Eating them did nothing to change the lump on my jaw.
I called my doctor on Tuesday to ask for a referral to an ENT. She asked me to come into the office instead. So, on Wednesday I saw my primary care doc. She thought an ENT was not the right person to see, but recommended instead that I see an axial/facial surgeon and said she thought I would probably have an MRI. My appointment with the axial/facial surgeon is scheduled for next Tuesday and I have to tell you I'm filled with trepidation. I'm scared of having an MRI because of claustrophobia and I'm afraid of what it could reveal.
I've played out all the worst case scenarios over and over and I've played out how silly I'm going to feel to learn it is a simple cyst. I hope I get to feel silly.
I've debated blogging about this, but since one of the primary purposes of this blog is to journal what is going on in our lives, and I can think of little else, I'm putting it out there. I promise to update after Tuesday's visit with the doctor.
What you see here are four nearly catatonic teenaged boys gathered in our living room. Thumb twitching assures me they are still conscious.
Here you see an image of the disgusting bloody game, Modern Warfare II, which induces their stupor. As you can see the screen is divided into quadrants. Each boy has control over one warrior in his own quadrant. They sneak up on each other by manipulating the hand-held controllers, and when they score a hit, blood erupts all over the screen. It is much easier to find your opponent if you glance over into his quadrant and look at things from his perspective. Unfortunately, this is considered bad sportsmanship, breaks the stupor, and produces shouts of "Screen Watching!!!" from all the other players. Under ideal circumstances, so I'm told, a player would only be able to see his own section.
So, Kane came up with this invention made of pizza boxes and duct tape. If the players were seated close to the TV and arranged high and low, right and left to match the quadrants on the screen and those formed by the pizza boxes, theoretically, screen watching would be impossible. Unfortunately, they could not make it stick to the TV screen. So, the game continues while the action on the screen predicts the behavior of the boys. When one is caught screen watching, warfare erupts. Life imitates art.
