I had mucogingival surgery on Tuesday, which is about as fun as it sounds. It’s actually feeling a bit better now than I was expecting, but that’s only because I was expecting something truly awful. I had this same procedure done once before, when I got my dental implants, about 25 years ago, and of the many procedures I’ve had done on my mouth, I remember it hurting the worst. (A close second was having spacers inserted before I got braces. My teeth ached unbearably for days. I remember trying to eat homemade kielbasa sausage and nearly being in tears because I couldn’t chew.) I don’t know if this surgery wasn’t as bad, or if I’ve gotten tougher as I’ve aged, or if I’ve hyped up the agony of the first time in my memory. Whatever the case, I’ll take it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s still awful, but it’s nowhere near the top of my pain power rankings.
In fact, the discomfort and annoyingness are worse than the pain. The stitches on the roof of my mouth (the donation site) are driving me crazy, and they’re the kind that loosen and dissolve on their own, so they’re gradually getting pulled out further and further, creeping toward my throat, evoking my gag reflex. I’ve had to go in there with tweezers and scissors and trim them twice already. Then I’ve got this weird molded dressing on my low gum (the transplant site) that makes me feel like Bubba from Forrest Gump. Also, I have these annoying rules to follow. I'm not allowed to work out (no vigorous exercise or heavy lifting), and I'm not allowed to sleep on my left side, which is particularly irritating as that's my good shoulder. It's hard to get comfortable, so it's hard to sleep, which exacerbates everything.
Nothing is as bad as the dietary rules, however. I basically can’t eat anything harder than mashed potatoes, and I can’t eat anything too hot or cold or spicy or sticky. I'm struck with room temperature mush three meals a day. I have a protein shake in the morning, a pureed can of soup for lunch, and a mound of scrambled eggs for dinner. In between, I eat applesauce and blended cottage cheese and fruit (see below) and my midnight snack is half a carton of strawberry yogurt. Literally half a carton – I polished off one of those big Stonyfield containers in two sittings.
The thing is, blended food tastes the same as nonblended food, but taste is not the only part of what we like about eating. Texture and variety matter a lot. Pureed chicken noodle soup still tastes like chicken noodle soup, but without the hunks of chicken to bite down into and the contrast of the noodles and vegetables, it’s just not the same. It’s not as enjoyable and also somehow not as filling. I think eating is psychological to a large extent. I remember reading once that part of what satiates us is the feeling of food going down our gullets. I never followed up to see if this is actually true, but it makes sense. If I eat a huge lunch, for instance, I’ll still want to eat dinner when it’s dinner time, even though I’m still stuffed from lunch. I’m somehow simultaneously hungry and full, and that only make senses if there is more to hunger than net food intake over a given time frame. All of which is to say, it really sucks to not eat solid food, and when you combine that with restless nights in bed, you get a grumpy DG. Actually, I haven't been especially grumpy, but I'm feeling it on the inside.
The pain meds they gave me are pretty lousy as well. I got two different types, ibuprofen 800 for the day and Tylenol 3 (codeine) for the evening. The ibuprofen is fine, but I don’t like the codeine. It dulls the pain and makes me drowsy (yet somehow I still can't sleep easily), which is exactly what it’s supposed to do, I guess, but it doesn’t make me feel good. I don’t want to be numb; I want to soar. I want a reward for suffering through the day; I want something to make me completely forget about my mouth for a while. I want the good shit.
I wish I could tell the doctor, “Look, don’t give me 12 codeine pills, most of those are going down the toilet. Give me three of the best stuff you got, the stuff somebody robbing a pharmacy would go for first, the stuff that sells for $50 a pill on the street. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for more, and I won’t get addicted. Trust me.” But I can’t say that, so instead I take my crappy meds (or don't) and wish I knew a drug dealer.
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In other news, we watched The Sandlot on family movie night a few nights ago. It’s a staple on all those “Classic Baseball Movies” lists, but somehow I had never seen it, despite it coming out almost 30 years ago and me being a huge baseball fan. It's kind of a shite film, truth be told. It’s one of those “didn’t age well” movies. There’s a scene where a boy is hailed as a hero for tricking a girl into kissing him against her will. He “became a man” that day says the narrator. Certainly not a great message about consent. Then there’s a part where two boys are having an insult battle and the ultimate putdown occurs when one boy tells the other boy he “throws like a girl.”
I think (hope) my kids recognize this as being outdated sexism, even if they can’t verbalize it as such. The stereotype of girls being athletically inferior to boys probably doesn't resonate as well to a younger generation who see so many prominent examples -- Megan Rapinoe, Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, etc. -- of women excelling in sports (or, in the case of my boys, don't seem to care about sports at all, although I'm still holding our hope for Lil' S2). It’s true that women aren’t as physically powerful as men, which is why they can’t compete against them at the highest levels of athletics, but that is only relevant at the highest level of athletics. Take your average dude, and without much trouble I could find a dozen women who are better than them in any athletic endeavor they choose.
Getting back to The Sandlot, the worst part of the movie is the ending, which painfully uses the Magical Negro trope (I've been randomly watching a lot of Key & Peele sketches lately) to conveniently solve the boys’ problems. It just isn’t a very good film. It has some cute moments, but overall… meh. At least it was nice to Marion Ravenwood again. And the film sure put Patrick Renna on the map. I wonder what that guy is up to these days. He’s probably one of those '90s child actors who’s surprisingly older than me and now a born-again Christian. Let’s see… close! He’s only a few years younger, and he’s a Scientologist.
Until next time…
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