November 16, 2005

Back from my post-operative haze.

I guess there are about six procedures involved in dealing with my foolishness in waiting so long to do something about a tooth that turned out to be cracked. Yesterday was the fourth one: screwing an implant into my jaw. The procedure was not harrowing, because I opted for the IV-sedation, but it caused a good deal of snoozing the rest of the day: a nap in the recovery room, a nap at home on the sofa, and an 8-hour overnight sleep. I wasn't in pain or nauseated, just useless.

I'd thought I'd watch a lot of television, but that turned out to be too challenging. I put on an old episode of Saturday Night Live, the one that begins with Wayne and Garth enthusing over the first Gulf War -- "Oh, she's a scud!" -- then I fell asleep during Sting's monologue. Later, I tried to watch "Special Report With Brit Hume," but it was over my head. Much later, getting into bed, the new "South Park" was just starting, so I let that go for a while.

Old people keep accidentally driving their cars into crowds of townsfolk, the citizens finally come up with the remedy of taking away the driver's license of everyone over 70. "How will I get to the drug store to buy my medicine?" "You belong in a nursing home anyway. We'll help put you there." The old people call in the AARP, which parachutes in hordes of old people with machine guns. I had to switch it off and conk out, so I don't know how the battle played out. I'm going to guess that in the end the townsfolk realized that taking every old person's license away was an overbroad remedy.

Now my long post-operative mental haze is over. I think. Time for some blogging, newsreading, CivPro-teaching, job-talk listening, article editing, etc. Or am I supposed to spend the day reclining, as it said on the sheet of paper the oral surgeon gave me, the one with all the advice about salt water and soft foods? I could have my painkiller prescription filled, make a groggy mess out of myself for a second day and lounging about sampling the contents of the TiVo. Wouldn't you?

Or am I still a groggy mess and too blurred to see it? If this post lacks my usual cogency and clarity, let me know. I could call in sick for the first time in twenty years.

6 comments:

Pete said...

Glad you're back and that everything seems to have worked out okay. You're posting seems quite clear and lucid to me. Blog away!

CCMCornell said...

You must have been wasted. That episode of South Park is almost 2 years old! And new episodes on Wednesday nights!

BTW, that episode, was titled "Grey Dawn," a play on the 80's film titled "Red Dawn" which was about a Soviet invasion.

The end is not quite as you put it. The AARP invasion is defeated as the seniors started to starve after the boys locked up the Country Kitchen Buffet. Upon reflection, the younger residents realize that they should value their seniors, but still never let them drive again.

Ann Althouse said...

CCM: Thanks. I totally believed it was Wednesday! Now that you remind me of the ending, I realize I did see that. The use of Country Kitchen in that episode was really funny. I didn't get the "Red Dawn" connection -- sorry, I've never seen it -- but it seemed to me to be using a lot of zombie movie things.

But you know, sometimes I forget what day of the week it is and I'm not the slightest bit wasted.

reader_iam said...

I did obliquely suggest yesterday that you should just laze around listening to the stoner music of the '60s and '70s. But it's not too late--you can always fill that prescription!

Unknown said...

Glad you made it through okay.

You should probably recline. You never know how your hangover will handle complex tasks like driving.

XWL said...

Red Dawn wasn't a zombie movie, it was about a group of (supposedly) high school aged students who form a para-military resistance group to fight back against a Soviet invasion (as mentioned by ccmcornell). The idea seems quaint today, and the film was lambasted as a survivalist wet-dream by most reviewers when it came out, but plenty of folks enjoyed that film in a big way, especially folks attracted to the military as a lifestyle.

The episode does mimic both that movie in the beginning and then zombie movies in the ending Country Kitchen scene.

The popularity of Red Dawn amongst today's military is evidenced by the fact that the operation to capture Saddam was called 'Red Dawn'.

And really, rather than looking to films for a solution to the aging problem, literature has a much better model to follow. Some big-pharma company should invent 'Soma' and make it so the drug has a great many benefits (mental sharpness, mild euphoria, physical well-being, etc.) for the user with the slight side-effect of proving fatal after say 4 or 5 years of cumulative use.

(and you know that boomers would eat that stuff like candy when they hit their late 60s and early 70s, especially if you could engineer it so it had cosmetic benefits as well)