I haven't been blogging a lot lately for a lot of reasons (a combination of extreme busyness with billable activities, and slight burnout on things to say), but here's today's.

I'm still recovering feeling in my chin and nose from a major dose of lidocaine, and various items being inserted into and removed from my jaw. My gums are tender, full of sutures, and I suspect that I'll be more swollen and painful tomorrow. I have reasonably good medication to deal with it (fortunately, my oral surgeon wasn't put off by threats from drug warriors at the DEA into undermedicating me for pain).

End result, hopefully, in a few months--infection-free gums and teeth, and good replacements.

I saw the movie "Kate and Leopold" the other night. It's entertaining, but I can't imagine making a conscious and deliberate choice to go and live in a world of over a century ago, in which modern dentistry was unavailable...

*shiver* Looking at pictures of early dentistry tools is more like a snapshot of medievel torture devices. But to imagine we've come so far that we are on the brink of being able to artificially grow new teeth and gum tissue. From just a century ago when a dentist was the guy at the bar that would buy you a stiff drink and then punch your jaw until the bad tooth popped out.

In the late 1920s my father was injured playing football. A bone in his left leg was bruised. It didn't heal on its own. Today, antibiotics would easily cure such an injury.

How did they "cure" Pop? They eventually cut open his leg, removed the infected bone and replaced it with a piece of platinum. Hey, he got to keep the leg. In 1820, he wouldn't have.

That injury affected Pop for the rest of his life.

I am so thankful for modern medicine it's not funny.