imagined-community

Photo courtesy the Nebraska State Historical Society

In the interest of honesty I have decided to disclose, to the world, something kind of crappy that is going on with me. Why? Because I have been dealing with this “something” for two years and it is more or less always a part of my daily life. This problem is costing me beaucoup de money (which causes me ongoing anxiety — let’s just say I could have bought a 2007 Corvette with the dough I am paying) and it has affected my appearance and my overall health. No, I don’t have cancer. No, I am not dying. Two years ago I found out that I have an aggressive and rare form of periodontal disease that was destroying the bones of my teeth, jaw, and sinus cavity. Although strangely it wasn’t causing me any pain. The problem was that if the bone continued to deteriorate at the rate it was going, I would lose all my teeth within five years and I would not be able to replace them. Fixing this situation was going to take a long time because I would need to heal for months between each surgery. My dentists tell me that eventually they will put me back together, but right now, to use a house repair analogy, I feel like a room that just had the carpet ripped up, the wallpaper stripped, and a wall knocked down, and now the workman are telling me that they need another year to put in a new wall, mount wood paneling, and refinish the floors.

The silver lining for all this is that I am becoming a little less vain and a little more sensitive toward people who have ongoing health problems; I am more willing to let other people help me, especially my mother; and while money worries do paralyze me at times, I can feel that I am shifting into hope, hope that everything will be all right no matter what; and hope that I will make the sacrifices that I need to make in order to pay for all this. Oh, and in August I noticed that I had lost 16 pounds without even trying! What was that I said about vanity…?