Root Canal/Appearances

End of March, 2008



A PLANT LADY’S LIFE IN GEEKATOPIA


Poem:
VOYAGE
Decades gone, the memories fade.
Here we are from where we were.
There we were upon the verge,
packing up to leave, packing
each a private reason,
each a vision, strangers
from each other as the stars
are to ocean depths. Seekers
drawn by separate lode stones,
disparate but thrown together
on the twisty path. Where are we now
and why, you ask? The answer
is mysterious and vast.


“Do you meditate, dear?” asked the kindly Sikh endodontist as he drilled toward my brain.

His “dear” was not a patronizing or flirtatious “dear” but a sincerely uttered comforting and respectful teddy bear sort of “dear”. (Unlike the “hun” I get from my least favorite Fred Meyer cashier - who is lucky I don’t lob a box of kitty litter at her offensive smirk.) I figured the doctor noticed my pathetic attempt at measured breathing.

“Yes, I do meditate a little - do a bit of yoga - though I find concentrating somewhat challenging during a root canal procedure!” I replied within the confines of the above mentioned brain.

“Ummgh, umgh,” was my audible response through the green rubber dam.

Half an hour earlier I had been sitting in my regular dentist’s chair expecting the replacement of a rather minor (I thought) cracked filling. Now I was a mile away at a specialist who was doing major demo work on my pearly whites. Don’t ever think you know where you will end up when you march out your front door - there are surprises just waiting to leap out of the shrubbery and catch you by the throat. Or jaw.

This was my first root canal (and I hope my last). I knew the punch lines: “I’d rather have a root canal than _____. “ (Fill in your greatest fear.) Surely there must be some mistake, I thought as I drove to the endodontist’s office. I wasn’t even sure what the heck an endodontist was - only that I would be more than willing to postpone finding out. In precisely one hour I was expected at my Senior Center writers’ workshop. It was the last workshop of the quarter so I couldn’t exactly call in sick (especially since I am the instructor). How long did a root canal take anyway?

Long enough. Dr. K. S. J. was the soul of gentle care but as the fourth shot of Novocain found its mark I was ready to go home, curl up in a tight ball and not emerge for a week or so. The topper was the needle through the palate! Man oh man! That must have been developed by the C.I.A. to interrogate suspected terrorists. I was ready to confess to being the shooter on the grassy knoll - had I been able to talk.

At which time my entire face solidified into a concrete slab and I didn’t give a rip anymore. I took a long slow breath, held it to the count of five, let it out to five, held it out to five - imagined a quiet lake surrounded by stately evergreens - breathing 1 and 2 and 3 and . . .

“Turn a little my way, dear,” said the kindly Sikh endodontist. “Now a little wider. Yes, that is good.” The drill whirred and rumbled against the inside of my cheek. Ka-chunk. Something flew off in the general direction of the instruments table.

“Oh yes, I see you have cracked this tooth,” said the doctor. “That is what has caused the problem.” His eyes crinkled with delight above the blue mask. At least one of us was having a good time.

The writers were working on the first story when I staggered into the workshop fifteen minutes late, having stopped at the drugstore to fill the prescriptions Dr. K. S. J. wrote for me - antibiotics and pain meds. Figuring I should pop a pain pill before the Novocain wore off, I opened the stapled paper bag - only to find that the pain pills were missing! All that was in the bag was the bottle of antibiotics.

I excused myself, leaving my briefcase on the table, and hotfooted it back to the drugstore (Okay, I’ll name names: Walgreen’s.). No, they hadn’t seen my bottle of hydrocodone. The only response I got was “Oops, we must have forgotten that one”. Likely story, I thought. They had certainly charged me for it. But in a few minutes I was on my way back to the workshop with a new bottle (I looked in the bag this time) - and a head that was beginning to throb awake.

Now here’s the thing: that the pharmacy “lost” one bottle of meds from the counter where the prescription was filled to the cash register (ten feet?) seems to me suspicious enough but that the lost bottle was a controlled substance sets off my fishiness meter. Of course there was a fifty-fifty chance that if something got lost it would be that bottle - but what were the chances that it not be found on the counter after I left? I’m willing to bet that had the antibiotics been the item that went missing it would have been immediately found. Of course there is a possibility the missing bottle turned up as soon as I left to return to the workshop. Right.

A few alternative scenarios: either the pharmacy crew was a totally incompetent bunch of lame brains - or someone in pharmacy has a little “problem” - and/or the bottle “fell” into a lab coat pocket - and/or someone in pharmacy is doing business on the side. I may be a squeaky clean plantlady but, heck, even I know that stuff has street value. Hmmmm . . .

So when I got home I pulled up the drugstore’s web site and left the customer service people a delicately worded message, detailing all the particulars and asking them to investigate the incident. Response? None as yet. Surprise, surprise.

LATE BREAKING NEWS!! Walgreen's has just called. They are "actively investigating" the Burien pharmacy and thanked me for blowing the whistle. I am hoping it is not a case of the fox guarding the hen house. We will see.

OFFICE PLANTS: Appearances



“I thought it was fake!”

I hear that phrase repeatedly around Geekatopia as I work on the plants. Usually I respond, “The plant is real. It’s the plantlady that’s fake”. That’s good for a laugh but I have wondered what people mean by that comment. Is it a compliment to my care of the plant? Or are they saying that the plants can’t be real because they look too perfect? (Which might refer back to their own plant care fiascos.) Do they think that fake plants are better than living, breathing plants? That can’t be right. After all, why would anyone even think of having a fake plant in the workplace? Aren’t there enough lifeless things in the office without adding more inanimate objects? (Think of that guy in the corner cube who has installed a mini-bar under his desk.)

Fake plants don’t DO anything - certainly nothing positive. They don’t clean the air or provide oxygen. They take up space and collect dust as well as other allergens. They don’t grow - and they don’t provide employment to plant care professionals! And, trust me, they rarely look “real”. Not really. Buy a real plant. Make a friend. Naturally that is my own, very biased opinion.