The Fabulous Doc John

The teeth in the front of my mouth aren't mine, because when I crashed, my head hit the side window either before, or after my face hit the steering wheel. Whatever the sequence, the results were the head injury, and a broken jaw.

Because my jaw was broken in two places, some of my teeth were probably going to die. So they took me across the street to a dentist, and he did some root canals while I slept in his chair. Hey, I had just come out of a coma!  The root canals didn't work, though, so they ended up pulling those teeth, and the dentist built a tooth bridge, using two good teeth as anchors.

When my then-husband first saw me, after the accident, the doctors focused their discussion on my main problem; the head injury.  They may have said Traumatic Brain Injury, or a Closed Cranium Trauma, but I always refer to it as my head injury. Almost as an after-thought, they said maybe my jaw was broken too. Hubby saw me yawn, and my lower jaw did some wacky shucks and jives, and he realized that maybe was the wrong adverb. The jaw was definitely broken.  So it was wired shut to heal.

Funny high light:  I was out of the hospital, but returning each day for outpatient therapies, and had my first temporary bridge in place.  On our way into L.A. from the Antelope Valley, we stopped for donuts.  As I bit into a glazed twist, my bridge stayed in the donut as I pulled it away. And with a squeal I turned to my ex.  He pulled the car to the edge of the freeway, reached across and calmly replaced my teeth.  As luck would have it, the dentist was arriving for work just as we pulled into his parking lot.

Yesterday, I spent four hours in my dentist’s chair, as he prepared my mouth for its third such bridge.  My teeth were simply chipping away, and I could actually see metal.  It took Doctor John, and his helper (are they called nurses?) quite some time to get my old bridge out. As he hammered away, his nurse commented on my brain rattling.  His reply came quickly:  Her brain was rattled a long time ago!

Finishing up, after those 4 long hours, he said he owed me a bottle of wine for letting him torture me.  My mouth was still full of stuff so I held up two fingers.  We all laughed, and he left the room.  On my way out, the girls at the front desk stopped me. Doctor John had left me two bottles of wine.  I think he is the best dentist, on this continent, for sure, but I hope this bridge lasts forever.

Hurry Up... and Wait

The Process

The process is not entirely clear to me yet, but I think I may muddle through.  I sent the application on-line, and got a call from an office in North Dakota. ND, mind you, not Montana, which is where I am at.  I was told my small home town didn't have enough workers to process the on-line apps so North Dakota was helping out.  It's struck me funny because, as a child in MT, the simpleton jokes we told always included a North Dakotan.  

We'd ask "How many North Dakotans does it take to change a light bulb?"  "Three!" We'd giggle, "One to hold the light bulb, and two to turn the chair!" And here I was, relying on this worker in ND to get it right.  But, it seems all she did was review my on-line app, to make sure the info needed was correct, before she sent it electronically to yet another place.  Well, I thought, no wonder she was so pleasant!

I knew they were coming but I didn't realize it would be the next business day.  It was good to have the "Work History" and "Functional" reports in hand so I had something to do, because I was now officially retired.  I figured I'd be done in a day or two, but it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I finally wrapped my damaged brain around the two forms' strange questions and got it finished.
  
Our government is moving to electronic disability claim folders so the finished forms were to be mailed to a "scanning contractor" in Salt Lake City, Utah!  There was a reference to my state's capital city in the send-to address though, so I felt better about sending the reports to Utah. Following Instructions on mailing the reports rivaled actual completion of said reports, sent them off...to Utah. There were no postage fees for returning them, I mean forwarding them, and that turned out to be the best news of all.