am I the mouse or the man?

Making plans is a dangerous activity. It tends to lead to the mistaken perception that I am in control of my own life. Not that I am suggesting it would be better for me to float from one thing to the next with no goal or plan in mind. That would be far worse. No, what I mean is that I tend to overreact when my plans are changed.

Take this past week, for instance. Last week I was supposed to have a few days off after my ALA convention and then have my second big gum surgery. I figured this would be the best possible timing, because I would have much of the healing done by the time I had to start actually doing homework for my classes (which start today). Enter the common cold, the proverbial monkey wrench in the gears of my well made plan. I fought with the cold throughout the conference, sleeping as much as possible but refusing to altogether skip anything. By Monday the cold was a sinus infection, but because of the holiday it took until Tuesday for me to see a doctor and get antibiotics.

This did not bode well for my dental work. On Wednesday I was supposed to have a check-up and my three month measurements on the first surgical site. I didn't make it to that one. So on Thursday I spoke with my dentist, and we decided that the surgery should be put off until I was completely well. By Friday I was well enough to turn my surgical appointment into a check-up, so we got the measurements taken and my teeth got a once-over sort of cleaning to prepare them for the next operation, which will be in about a month. It was the best we could do, so I'll just have to live with it. (Side note: the periodontology department has moved to the remodeled 12 floor, where everything is shiny and new. Several chairs even face huge windows looking out over the city--I hope I get to have one of them when I go back for my surgery.)

By now I've gotten used to the idea, and really, it was good to have a few more days to rest and recover from this bug so that I can be healthy going into the semester. But my initial reaction was frustration, and I even resented the extra time I had been given, because now I had to think of something to do this weekend now that I wasn't going to be recovering from surgery. That is not the reaction I should have when presented with free time. Something is clearly wrong with me.

I have decided to claim this realization as a teachable moment. I cannot control my own life, and I need to stop pretending I can. Even though the next year is largely planned out already, that's no reason for me to be complacent and just assume everything will go the way I want it to. Life happens, and more importantly, God often changes our plans in ways we cannot comprehend. Somehow this is easier to understand with the big things, like school, careers, internships, and harder to live out day-to-day. It's as if I can trust that God is planning the larger arc of my life, yet somehow think he has no say in the smaller details or that he leaves me to deal with these complications on my own. Thank goodness that isn't true. He cares that I get frustrated, and when my plans fall through he has another option waiting for me.

Sometimes, though, my plans and God's plans seem to line up beautifully, but that's a story for another post.

-Kim

surprises, not emergencies

So I ended up visiting my dentist on Monday. I was going about my work at my internship, when all of a sudden I noticed an odd feeling in the back of my mouth. It felt like there was a piece of string back by my tongue. Naturally, I assumed s suture had come loose, so I called my dentist to see what we should do about it. She was in surgery with another patient, but when she called me back later in the afternoon she said to come on in and let her take a look at it.

When I got to the check-in desk at the 2nd floor periodontal unit I told the receptionist that I didn't have an appointment but that my dentist had told me to come in and have them page her when I arrived. The response was "so it's an emergency appointment?"

Well, not really. To save time my answer was "I guess so." But really, it wasn't. There was no pain, no blood, just a piece of string that felt really weird. I guess they only have two labels for appointments in their system: planned or emergency.

It turns out that what I was feeling was not the all-important outer suture--purple thread in a continuous stitch that would have had to be tacked down instead of cut out--but a large piece of the inner, yellow suture, which should have dissolved after five days. This was 11 days after the surgery. So Fatema pulled out the offending piece of thread and flushed out the rest of the surgical site while she was at it. She says things are looking good, but the purple sutures still won't come out until next Friday.

So really, there was no emergency and not even a real problem. That suture was supposed to come out on its own, we just didn't expect to see such a large piece at once, or so late in the game. Surprise!

-Kim

Boston Children's

This morning did not go at all as planned. I was supposed to meet with my group to work on a project, but I ended up taking a friend to the emergency room instead. Tierney met me at the library to work, but she looked like death warmed over and couldn't breathe. Because we didn't realize that campus safety would have given us a free ride, we walked the couple blocks to the nearest hospital to main campus, which is actually the Boston Children's Hospital. But they didn't worry so much about her not being a child, since it was pretty clear that walking to the next facility wasn't going to be a good idea.

So nobody gets worried, I'll tell you right now that it turns out that she has gall stones and was experiencing a gall bladder attack (before today I didn't know they could do that). But it took over 4 hours for them to figure it out. We spent the intervening time discussing our King Arthur project and anything else that might distract her from the needles. A friendly nurse named Wally drew blood, but then they had to try twice to get an IV in to give her fluids, and that didn't go over well. In the end, it was an ultrasound that showed the problem for what it was, but I couldn't be there for that part. I had to go back to campus for class, Tierney having assured me that she would be fine.

I think this was the first time I've been to the emergency room for someone else. It's a very different experience when you're not the one in pain. It didn't feel as if we had been there 4 hours, though apparently we had by the end of things. That was time I would have been using to get work done, but it was better spent making sure my friend was alright. It's good though, that we had planned to meet today. Otherwise, she would have been in the dorm when it happened and probably would have tried to sleep it off instead of going in and finding out what the real problem was. And now that she knows, it can be taken care of, though she wants to put off the surgery until the semester is over, if possible.

So, things didn't go the way we had intended, but a greater good was accomplished instead. God canceled our study time so the medical mystery could be solved and addressed. Sadly, no Dr. House. Maybe we'll get him next time.

-Kim