More Handicapped than Thou

Today on the bus there weren't quite enough handicapped seats for everyone who wanted them. In this bus, these consisted of two three-place seats lining opposites sides of the bus and facing each other. Most buses I ride also have forward-facing seats just behind these side-facing seats, but this bus had metal walls blocking those seats.

A man with a white cane and a woman got on the bus and wanted to sit up front. One woman who had been hogging one whole seat readjusted things so that she was now taking up only two of the three places. (She was in one, a large bag was in one, and her other bags were under the seat.) The two newcomers wanted more space, and she didn't want to move.

Finally the bus driver had to intervene. He got up out of his seat. The seated woman said, "They struck me. I didn't strike them. They struck me twice on my knee. I'm just as handicapped as they are. I'm partially blind, too." I did not have a clean line of sight to either of her knees.

Then the people in the other front seat got up. It looked like a family with a man, a woman, and two kids who had all squished into a three-place seat to be together. They quietly spread out into three other seats.

The man with the cane and woman sat down.

And we all lived happily ever after. The end.

Wisdom Teeth

Six months ago at the dentist I was told that I need to have my two lower wisdom teeth removed because they are too hard to clean around and will get infected. One had felt infected a couple of times, but getting regular with the tooth brushing cleared it right up. (My two upper wisdom teeth are still lurking within the gums.)

An oral surgeon was recommended who comes by periodically but who is not on my insurance. I made an appointment and he confirmed that I should get this surgery and gave me an estimate of $700. I decided to wait until the next insurance plan year so I could have that money set aside pre-tax and thus save 15%.

Then I read a few stories about wisdom tooth removal and realized that this is not something you do lightly. You should give yourself some time to recover afterwards, like with other surgeries. (Do not do it before a vacation or a party, etc.) And you can have nasty complications. Depressing. I've hung around two people who've gotten their wisdom teeth removed; one was fine the next day and went back to work. One was moaning and groaning on the couch for a week while I fed him milkshakes.

So today I was back at the dentist. New x-rays were taken. This bothered me because I thought that x-rays show the position of your teeth, and mine aren't moving, so why do they need more? So I asked the dentist and he said because they can also see decay. If there is any, which there wasn't this time. (Yea!)

And the dentist talked about my wisdom teeth. One is obviously parallel to the one next to it and not causing any trouble. The other is growing in at a slant, so there might be trouble, but he tried flossing between it and the neighbor tooth and the floss fit just fine. So he thought that so long as I was willing to be diligent about cleaning that area, I didn't need to have it removed.

This made me angry. When I have an choice between annoying tooth cleaning for the rest of my life, which I have to do anyway for all my other teeth, or painful semi-expensive surgery with risky anesthesia, I really don't want to hear only the surgery choice.

I asked if the top and bottom wisdom teeth generally come in at the same time if they're all coming in or if they sometimes come in at wildly different times. He said that when they come in at different times, usually the bottom ones come in first. So even though I'm 43 I could still have more wisdom teeth coming in at some point.

Later, my dental hygienist, who had not been in the room during all this talk, said she thought I was going to have my wisdom teeth removed. I said, "That's one possibility." And then she told me about the infection problem again.

Well, I like her and respect her, and started thinking that my new plan to just keep my wisdom teeth might not work out like I hoped. What if everything works fine until one day when it doesn't, and by then I'm 72. I'll wish I'd had the surgery back when I was a spry 43 and was better at healing from these things. (I assume. I'm already at an age that is really terrible at healing from these things, from what I heard last time. That's why no one suggested pulling my top two wisdom teeth--since they weren't coming in, they weren't causing any trouble.)

I'm starting to realize this is another one of those areas where I'm going to need to do some reading on my own and make my own decisions rather than merely relying on trained professionals. Bleh.

***

When I got to work after my appointment, there was cake with strawberries and whipped cream waiting for me. Fortunately, I am the kind of person who has no trouble eating sweets right after a dental appointment.

Web site of the day - Are you better off single?, by Dawn Yanek. "While snuggling up next to a warm body can be pretty fantastic, according to a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, your bedmate can cause you to lose an average of 49 minutes of sleep per night. Sleeping two-to-a-bed just isn't as restful as snoozing solo."

I've never seen an article from this perspective before. I've seen plenty of articles about why it's better to be married and stay married. You get richer. You get happier (at least the men do). Your kids are more well-adjusted.

So this article lists ten things that are better for single than married people. The one about sleeping better is not actually true in my experience. I think I do fine either way, and I know a person who definitely does better when he's not sleeping alone.

Other things depend like whether I have a better body.

Two are only true for women--single women tend to do less housework and be less depressed. Weird.

Another surprise: you're more likely to achieve great things if single. I always thought that if you had a nice, solid, supportive home life, you could take more risks outside of home and thus be more likely to achieve greatness. And that has felt true to me, too. (This one was tested only on men.)

And the other cautionary one for people in couples - single people tend to have more interesting travel tales.

The article is actually written for an audience of people who wish they were married but are still single, so it's oddly pro-marriage while espousing benefits of singlehood. Interesting.