Is there Wisdom in a Wisdom Tooth

Yenta, I'm sorry I don't live closer, or I'd be offering to help more than 'moral support'.  I actually went to help a friend in need for several days, who kept saying 'I walked into smell food cooking -- do you know how long it's been since I got home and smelled someone ELSE cooking food?'  Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to work the fancy oven so instead of roasting a beet and then adding it to the stew, so I threw it in as it was simmering and made the whole thing 'different'. It's amazing how one big beet can change a stew if added when raw instead of cooked/at the end.  But it was edible and very nutritious.  And she'll be happy to do her own cooking moreso and appreciate NOT having someone else cooking in her kitchen I figured.  <grins>  (This was complicated by my simply trying to use up what I'd brought with me, because of the full fridge factor -- when things come up unexpectedly, as life can provide, you have to kinda roll with things and they might not be as you normally would have them be!  Including the dinner!)

You bring up an excellent point about receiving and giving.  It's best, like an electrical circuit, when a person does an equal amount of each, I believe.  I had to learn that the hard way in my marriage around age 30 when I became very ill with chronic fatigue syndrome.  I'd always had some of it, but at age 29 I couldn't lift a grocery bag, walk more than half a block without getting wobbly and weak and needing to sit (blood pressure dropping on top of the overall weakness, I now believe).  Only because of having given so much when my husband was very ill a couple of years before with MRSA in his cerebrospinal fluid from a surgery about the time our relationship started, did I feel okay about being the receiver and not the giver. That I didn't RUN from a situation that was that complicated with medical was pretty telling, in retrospect, but I'd come from a household with a good man as a father who had what I now recognize was fibromyalgia, with the chronic pain and in particular migraines/headaches.  We end up attracting and then 'being with' what is familiar, and it becomes a conscious and somewhat difficult process to move from that to what we design our life to be, ultimately.  To me, that's the advantage of middle age for most people -- to actualize that.  

At least for me, it was very good for me to experience being on the receiving end AND that things didn't have to always all be done and perfect -- the world still spun and has ever since! It taught me a great deal about the teamwork involved in marriage and that you truly do have synergy when you're in a partnership of any kind.  

And that extends to Lumigrate.  We have dozens of wonderful people contributing, but it doesn't add up as if it's 1xdozens.  It's infinitely better!  And YOU are one which adds such wisdom and humor and warmth to our pages.  THANK YOU.  And take care of that mouth of yours!  (In more than just the dental way, if you know what I mean.  )  The friend I went to help is very funny and in a way that is very 'truthful' that some might call 'painfully honest'... so I took a bottle of wine in a bag that said 'Santa knows if you've been bad or good' and whenever she said something that was rather 'over the top' related to her nemesis, who was in the process of passing on, I would flash the bag.  That was funny for about a day. I'm surprised I didn't end up with a sore mouth too!  

~~ Mardy

Yenta, Mardy let me know you'd written this piece.  I'm glad you had friends and Moishe to help you; my husband and I just celebrated our 30th anniversary of being married.  We've had our share of taking care of each other over the years and both believe in helping people in our communities.  

I referred to something similar in one of my pieces on Lumigrate for Older Driving Safety last year.  Paying it forward with driving for those older who are not driving anymore is an excellent strategy for being able to accept the help with transportation when the times comes when a person cannot drive safely, just as you experienced and shared with us.  Thank you for this, I enjoyed it very much; laughing is such GRATE medicine!  

Drive safely, and keep the rubber side down! Karen

For anyone who is interested in reading the piece, here's the link 

www.lumigrate.com/forum/older-driver-safety-awareness

Karen dawlink!

Oy sveethart, do we need you down here in Florida!  There's a reason it's called "G-d's waiting room".  These alta kakers refuse to give up their driver's license and cause more accidents than I care to tell you.  Between them and the new drivers I could just plotz (fall down)! 

For people such as us, it's very difficult to give up the independence of driving, especially when walking is difficult or everything is too far away (more than 100 feet), or bus transportation is unavailable... bubeleh, I could go on with the excuses - so most alta kakers (old geezers) don't give up driving and in the state of Florida they don't have to unless something detrimental happens (G-d forbid).  They're very nice down here that way... silly, but nice.

Just the other day I was in the parking lot of a supermarket and watched an old man go the wrong way up a lane (marked with an arrow) and hit three parked cars before he parked his car.  If someone hadn't told him of the event he wouldn't have known.  The police were called to make a report and I stuck around just in case the man's license was yanked from him and he needed a ride home.  The officer said he was fine to drive!  WHAT?  Let's review, shall we?  He HIT three cars going the wrong way and didn't know it, but he's "fine to drive".  Makes you wonder, no?

So here's what I propose: EVERYBODY move to Florida when you turn 65! It couldn't hurt!

Your

Yenta

Yenta, unless Jim Kennedy, DDS and Ilene Spector, DO move to Florida, I'm not moving anywhere!  (However, I would LOVE to come visit in the winters!)  Why do I say that?  In 2011, they've essentially 'tag teamed' with their similar techniques to get my body onto a track it's not been on for a long time, or perhaps ever.  I found it really interesting that I was in my 50s and, for the first time, I felt like I was finally to the 'core' of the problem with my health.  Or, in this case, the 'root' -- pun intended. 

I commiserate with you about the pain you had.  A year or so ago I woke up with pain on the left side of my mouth. Like you, I was thinking it was other things; over time when people had said 'you're a mess!' related to my health, I used to say 'but I have great hair and teeth!', because I've never had the typical problems people have with their hair or teeth; for some reason I had a LOT of cavities as a child but then my adult/second teeth had just a few little cavities or flaws in the enamel that had to be filled.  Before things started changing in my young adulthood with my health, I only needed cleanings every couple of years and that was one of the first changes that was a harbinger for what could have been early intervention that might have nipped losing my wellness 'in the bud', but sadly the dentist didn't know enough about overall health or have good clinical reasoning, just as most doctors don't know about overall health and clinical reasoning, in my opinion.  That's why I continue to encourage people to become their own health detectives, as nobody's going to care as much about your health as YOU do!

I knew that I'd left off with the ENT specialists here in town when the 'next step' was a CT scan of my sinuses because of the number of infections I was having.  It seemed to me that if I'd not had a sinus infection until my health was crashing in my 30s, then it stood to reason that I could get back to that state if I just peeled the onion and took myself back up the trail I'd come down; in other words continue the process of getting out of chronic illness and back to chronic wellness. 

The pain subsided and hadn't ever been 'excruciating' and when I went in for my scheduled semi-annual tooth cleaning with my general dentist, it was diagnosed as a cracked molar and recommended I get a crown. I realized I felt as lost as healthy people do when they suddenly have something medical come up, and I certainly hope they turn to Lumigrate for information when that occurs. I didn't know whether I was being given good advise or not about the treatment, and I've learned through all this health stuff to 'question authority', as the saying goes and is being re-minded today.  

It seemed to me that if I cracked a tooth clenching at night and nobody's told you that can happen with the shape of teeth you have, nor offered strategies to address/prevent/correct that, I'd be remiss as a consumer to not question that related to my oral health, which has so much to do with overall health.  It astounded me how much my eating changed just because of one tooth -- I certainly had a much deeper appreciation for how much good health has to do with the mouth! In not too long a time, I had a return of gum issues that were similar to the problems that were the first signs of my forthcoming health crash into fibromyalgia fifteen years before and this time when the dental office couldn't offer any advise other than brushes and topical products, I knew who to call! ITC Pharmacy's pharmacists.  Actually, I emailed.  I purchased what was recommended, and incorporated a couple more pills into my daily regimen, and things resolved.  Remember "The Lumigrate You Model" on the home page?  It takes a village.   

And so I've recruited Dr James "Jim" Kennedy to be part of the village at Lumigrate.  He's not a 'general dentist', but specializes in things to do with the bones and tooth alignment.  He's already provided pieces about TMJ dysfunction and remediation as well as pediatric orthodontics and why early intervention is best in some situations.  To my surprise, there have been more reads of that piece than the TMJ piece.  Go figure! But that's how we know where to roll with Lumigrate's content, where the reads and interest and responses are! 

"Jim" comes at things from a very holistic place that I'd classify under the 'functional medicine' umbrella, which is where you're looking at the underlying cause of something. I believe that approach is a shift we're needing to take everyone in, so that's the approach I wanted to have on Lumigrate.  In my case, I put off getting the crown done until I had the money for it, and by then I didn't need it anymore. I keep hoping the same strategy will work with the sound card in my computer but so far, no spontaneous return of sound.  

So I shifted my resources I'd set aside for a crown (time, energy, money) to having Dr Kennedy make an oral appliance that positions my jaw differently which then affects breathing, head position, and protects the teeth from being injured in clenching.  I didn't used to clench my teeth, that seems to correspond with pain of fibromyalgia/FM; FM was likely contributed to happen by the breathing issue which affected my sleep at night.  I really encourage people "to keep peeling the onion" of problems.  And I hope that Lumigrate's complement of providers and information helps people and their providers with their onions! 

Since I feel I've made a 'good' recovery to date, with the expected ups and downs, from what had become a disabling case of fibromyalgia about the age of 40, I'd like to offer that I'd been overly ambitious about meeting my goal of being off of all the myriad of pharmaceutical medications.  While I am grateful to have had them and the providers to prescribe them and the insurance to pay for the majority of them, I consider them something to get you stabilized while you simultaneously start looking at the underlying causes and correcting those things.  My trips to get my teeth cleaned became a really neat thing as I was updating the hygienist each time with progressively more things coming off the list of medications they reviewed each time!  But I still have trouble falling asleep at night sometimes and have quite a bit of muscle tightness/pain by bedtime, and find that the muscle relaxant I'd been prescribed in the ramp up of helpful medications still makes my world spin a bit better.  I've seen it listed in just one book as a good sleep aid for fibromyalgia, and learned from the original prescriber that it is preferred because it reduces substance P in the cerebrospinal fluid, which is known for many years now to be elevated in many people who have FM.  

So Yenta, I hope you're UP and over the setback of your oral issues and thank you for starting off a good discussion about the mouth.  And older people 'paying it forward' which got Karen hopping back in!  I'm going to see Dr Kennedy today for a regular 'head expanding session' as I joking refer to them.  I mean, if there are 'head shrinkers', then he's a head expander, I think.  Dr Spector saw me last week for our monthly session and she says things are better in my body/brain per her osteopathic manual medicine perspective as she's seen in the two years I've been going to her.  Again, she comes here once a month from Crested Butte and has gotten a bigger and bigger following as the years have gone on.   I'm fortunate to have landed in Grand Junction eight years ago next month! Maybe everyone should just move HERE when they turn 65!