Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden
Mykala surprised me at the gym today. I saw a young lady out of the corner of my eye, and it was my wife! I don’t like being away from her, at all, even during my gym time. Nine years into our relationship, this seems like a good sign. We talk and talk and talk and take walks and picnics and spend such wonderful hours together. We joke about going to work at the same place, like maybe I can work at a dental building and she can work in an adjoining suite… but that’s a reality I would be thrilled with! After all, marriages aren’t about time apart.
There is a thunderstorm rolling through right now. After weeks of extreme humidity that has turned the papers in our house to rags and our dispositions into heat-addled crabbiness, the rain is a relief. I’ve thrown open the windows that aren’t painted shut, and the house is finally giving up its heat to cooler air. There’s no lullaby like thunder.
I like to keep patients safe. I like to work on clean, isolated teeth. My endless (ask Mykala) reading of primary literature makes me love what is called a “dry field” to work in (no saliva, no tongue). So, I’m in favor of rubber dams. Very much in favor. Here is one of my favorite photos, ever:
That is a Coltène/Whaledent Flexi Dam Non Latex. It has a little waffle-y expansion matrix in the material (like a Glad ForceFlex garbage bag) that allows it to strrrrrrretch out. After breaking three dams in a row on three patients in a row, I started to suspect it wasn’t me but the material. This stretchy dam looked like a good alternative. For what it’s worth, that is a Fiesta brand color-coded rubber dam retainer also pictured on that tooth above, which is amazing as well.
How do I know? After researching the best dam system for a few months, I put in an order request and my kindly employer was nice enough to purchase the retainers and dams for me. It is hard to say how happy this makes me — I get to do the absolute best quality work possible for patients. Any compromises, no matter how small, say, maybe an increase in relative humidity during bonding or difficulty obtaining a broad contact, makes me really depressed (again, ask Mykala).
Luckily, the opposite is also true — getting to do the best (rubber dam, 4th or 5th gen bonding, V3 sectional matrix system, new burs) makes me so so happy.
“Act with kindness. People return with good will to the place that has done them well.”
— Fortune cookie
Back in the day (2001), a British fellow named Steve Smith voiced parts of an album by a band named Dirty Vegas called Days Go By. This would be high school Alex listening to this, and he was proud to have liked it before the single became hugely popular when featured in a Mitsubishi Eclipse commercial. A few things about this. First, everyone knows that the second generation (95-99) Mitsubishi Eclipse with the lump in the hood for the turbocharger and just-short-of-ridiculous and therefore stupendously awesome hoop spoiler is the best Eclipse. The ones after are merely boring cars that happen to bear the name. Second, I asked for the Dirty Vegas album for Christmas from my then-girlfriend’s parents. In retrospect, this was a tremendously stupid idea because (1) it is very hard to describe your enjoyment of British house music to a family that primarily listens to country and (2) oh my god I swear it was at least 5 years later when I was cleaning out stuff and ran across this album again that I actually noticed the angle of the shirt on the cover:
Way to go, stupid past version of me! These esoteric interests — unusual music, coding, engineering, architecture (to name a few) — have long since been cast aside as topics of conversation and I have inverted to talking about things so vanilla and pedestrian that I think some may find it quite wearisome. Obviously, I’m still looking for that balance.
Anyhow, I heard that voice again in a wonderful song by Jaytech called Stranger (Kyau & Albert Remix). It features a face-meltingly great hook, good for that last ten percent of your workout where you’re just about out of energy, nearly out of sweat, and pressing to best your previous time.
Oh and P.S. if you are wondering what music I WOULD talk about with people, I definitely would start with “My Number” by Foals.
We recently went to my 10 year high school reunion. I wasn’t going to go, but then Nils pep-talked me into it.
I’m really glad I went, but I am still the same shy person I was. So it is still tough to have conversations with strangers… yet I still thrive on genuine human conversation, and during the time I was at the reunion, there was a lot of that going on. I wonder what our lives will look like in another 10 years.
Mykala and I took a 10+ mile bike ride from Prospect Park, down University, across the River on Hennepin and over part of the Cedar Lake trail through the north part of Minneapolis. It was in the mid 70s outside and the sun wasn’t yet setting but was low enough in the sky to turn things nice colors. Target Field was hosting a Twins game. It wasn’t too humid or windy or hilly or buggy. We just sailed along on our wheels.
We worried about one another, as we always do — I tried to increase our cross section to make us more visible to car drivers by riding on the far outside part of the bike lane, and Mykala tried to get me to fall into line so we’d be safely out of harm’s way. We called out directions and cautions to one another; nothing planned, simply habitual.
I like going no-handed, and with toe cages you can keep pedaling along, sometimes for miles, without touching the handlebars. I love leaning back in the saddle to rest my neck and arms; makes me feel like a superhero, gliding effortlessly along the asphalt.
I love being outside.
I was just reading Spirituality and religion in oncology (Peteet, J. R., & Balboni, M. J.(2013). CA: a cancer journal for clinicians.), which quantifies the positive effects of going beyond the physiology of cancer to the person enduring the disease, especially at the end of their life. Here’s a part that struck me:
Recognizing the broad relevance of existential concerns in oncology, physicians and nurses interested in providing spiritual care can begin by assessing the spiritual dimension of their patients’ responses to questions that address these in the domains of:
identity/worth (“What is my place in the world?”)
hope (“What can I hope for?”)
meaning/purpose (“What is most important in life?”)
relatedness (“Who can I count on?”)
I was thinking, though, shouldn’t those questions be ones we ask our entire lives? It would sort of be like trying to figure out at the last bite of dessert why you were eating dinner — was it just so you wouldn’t feel hungry or were you celebrating with people you love?
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