Archive | 11:30 pm

Saturday food

2 May

I tried a few different foods today. In the afternoon, I had a mixed a shredded tortilla in with some peanut butter and jelly. It tasted pretty good, but it was hard to get the peanut butter to mix. This probably wouldn’t have been a problem had the peanut butter come from the top of the jar, but the last few spoonfuls in a jar are always hard. (If you’re keeping track, I finished that 28 ounce jar seven days after opening it, compared to six days for the last one.)

For dinner, I made the tamarind lentils from Veganomicon again. This time, I used green lentils and allowed them to cook for considerably longer than the instructions. The result of this was that the lentils ended up nice and soft, so that I can swallow them without chewing. I multiplied the recipe by a factor of approximately four, so it should last me a while. I used my largest pot (which is actually only 5.5 quarts), and the quadrupled recipe very nearly filled this. I’ll have to put the pot in the refrigerator (when it finally cools) because I don’t have any other container big enough.

I also made a dessert today, but I’ll write about it tomorrow after I’ve tried it.

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Not a bill

2 May

Neglected (but not forgotten) in the excitement over opening my mouth for the first time in three weeks was the arrival on Wednesday of a statement for my treatment in the emergency room. It stated in big letters that it was not a bill, and that the hospital was in the process of billing my insurance company. Unfortunately, it appears that (in spite of the EMT in the ambulance telling me that he had submitted information for both insurances) they have only my student insurance information, which is secondary to the plan I have through my father’s job. I’ll have to get that corrected, and it will almost surely be more trouble than it needs to be.

Fortunately, the charges are less than I thought they might be (although still a substantial sum of money for a stay of less than four hours). I’m surprised, though, by a charge of $157.10 for “Pharmacy”. The only things I can think of that this might have covered are the hospital robe, the stuff they used to clean my abrasions, the needle and thread to stitch my wounds, the tube of bacitracin ointment they gave me, and the shirt I left the hospital in. They didn’t even bandage my wounds, so there would have been no charge for bandages. I’ve listed a lot of possibilities, obviously, but it’s still hard for me to believe it would add up to that much, and some of it I would have expected to be included under “Emergency treatment” instead. Luckily, my insurance should cover almost all of the charges (once I get the correct information to the hospital), but I have to feel bad for the uninsured patient who has to pay the whole bill.

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The state of my mouth

2 May

I’ve been unwired for a few days, and there are a few things that seem worth mentioning at this point.

  • I still can’t open my mouth very far, and I can’t really tell if it’s improved any. The Google knol on jaw fractures says “[it] will take a lot of effort on the patient’s part to re-obtain facile use of the jaw.”
  • I still can’t really brush the insides or tops of my teeth, but I was surprised that even from the first day, I was able to floss in between most pairs of adjacent teeth. Yesterday, I purchased some CVS brand Dental Flossers, apparently an imitation of a product called Plackers.  These allow me to floss without putting a finger in my mouth, which is helpful. For everyday use, these would seem wasteful, but given the circumstances, I don’t mind using them.
  • I left a message for my oral surgeon on Friday to see if I should be doing something about the discomfort I was experiencing, but I haven’t heard back. It’s generally feeling, better, though. I don’t know if this is actual improvement, or just a reflection of the fact that I didn’t talk much today.
  • The arch bars are held in place by some wires around the teeth, and these move around a bit now that my mouth can move. Not surprisingly, this can be uncomfortable at times.
  • For a while, I thought that eating, and specifically sucking, was creating some discomfort in  my jaw. I realized, though, that it wasn’t the bone but the gums near the wires holding the arch bars in place that hurt. Obviously that way it doesn’t make me worry that my jaw will break again, which is good.
  • I’ve noticed that the right side of my mouth tends to open a little bit further than the left side. I’m not sure if this is something that will go away over time.
  • When I first opened my mouth after the wires were removed, my top and bottom teeth felt sort of soft or mushy against each other. It occurred to me today that it no longer feels this way, but I have no idea when things changed.

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