Dianna and Ann

As I continue working on my semester internship project at the Congregational Library, I am continually coming across individuals and materials that make me think of Dianna and her upcoming trip to India. I suppose that's not really surprising, since I am researching a Christian missionary society. But the connections are too powerful to be written off as mere coincidence.

I've always been interested in/excited about Adoniram Judson because of my connection to him through camp Judson. In the course of my research, however I'm becoming more and more impressed by his first wife Ann Hasseltine. (In the course of his missionary work Judson was twice a widower and three times married.) The Judsons, in 1812, were the first missionaries to be sent out from America, along with several others from the ABCFM. Their mission was to India. I was especially moved by a sermon I found in the Congregational Library collection. While not an official commissioning service, the message does address the imminent departure of the missionaries, paying special attention to the women, which is surprising for the era. Following is an excerpt of the "Sermon, delivered at Haverhill, February 5, 1812, on the occasion of two young ladies being about to embark as the wives of Rev. Messieurs Judson and Newell, going missionaries to India. By Jonathan Allen, pastor of the First Church in Bradford." Please forgive awkward phrasing, grammar and punctuation--it was 1812, after all. This section was addressed directly to Ann Hasseltine Judson and Mary Newell.

My dear children--you are now engaged in the best of causes. It is that cause for which Jesus the Son of God came into the world and suffered and died. You literally forsake father and mother, brothers and sisters, for the sake of Christ, and the promotion of his kingdom. In this employment you, probably, have an arduous work before you--A work, that will occupy all your talents and much of your time.

"When I was at Chinganoor," says Dr. Buchanan (a place inhabited by christians) "the sight of the women assured me I was once more in a christian country. For the Hindoo women, and the Mahomedon women, and, in short, all women, who are not christians, are accounted by the men an inferior race, and, in general, are confined to the house for life, like irrational creatures."

It will be your business, my dear children, to teach these women, to whom your husbands can have but little, or no access. Go then, and do all in your power, to enlighten their minds, and to bring them to the knowledge of the truth. Go, and if possible, raise their character to the dignity of rational beings, and to the rank of christians in a christian land. Teach them to realize, that they are not an inferior race of creatures; but stand upon a par with men. Teach them that they have immortal souls; and are no longer to burn themselves, in the same fire, with the bodies of their departed husbands. Go, bring them from their cloisters into the assemblies of the saints. Teach them to accept Christ as their Savior, and to enjoy the privilages of the children of God.

[...]

And may the Lord himself be with you, and support and comfort you, and be your portion forever.

And now I use Allen's powerful words to commission and encourage Dianna Anderson, on her own mission to India with Faceless International to join the fight against human trafficking.

Dianna, in this employment you have an arduous work before you--a work that will occupy all your talents and much of your time. It will be your business to teach the world of these women, who suffer in sexual slavery and destitution. Go then, and do all in your power to be enlightened and to enlighten our minds, and to bring us to the knowledge of the truth of these gross injustices. Go, and if possible, raise our character to the dignity of rational beings, and to the rank of Christians who do not ignore evils present in the land. Teach us to realize that these girls are not an inferior race of creatures to be bought and sold but stand upon a par with all mankind. Teach us to remember that they are children of God. Go, and show them the love of their Redeemer. Go, and may the Lord himself be with you.

Go, and in serving, inspire us to serve.

-Kim

Learn more about Dianna's mission to India here.

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

"Into every generation, a slayer is born"

And this time, it was me.


This was my costume for Halloween this year: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The hair is all wrong, but short of buying a wig it was the best I could do.

Until a few months ago I knew almost nothing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But after being told by several different people that I was missing out on something great, I decided to find out what they were talking about. Since I love Joss Whedon's other work, it seemed like a pretty good idea. So over the summer I set myself the goal of watching the whole series. That's 7 seasons, for a total of 144 episodes, each about 42 minutes long. Since the Simmons library has the whole series it was no trouble getting my hands on them, and the lack of homework gave me the time I needed to plow through and immerse myself in the awesomeness that is Buffy (And the awesomeness of Spike, but that could be a whole different post).

A while back I drafted half of an essay detailing why Buffy is such a good show, but in the end it all boils down to great, believable characters. Sure, most of them have superpowers or drink blood, but their personalities and their choices are real. That's what's so great about fantasy and science fiction--the writers have to work harder at making things real. In order for a reader or viewer to believe the fantastic events that happen, we have to believe in the characters, we have to see them react the way a normal person would. In real life dramas writers can get away with making ridiculous characters, in fact, they almost have to in order to make everyday happenings seem exciting. But the fantasy writer pairs the fantastic with the mundane, grounding the demons in realistic human experience.

That's part of what makes Buffy so cool--she feels real. She's just a teenage girl trying to fit in at school and have fun with her friends, and the Hellmouth keeps getting in her way. And as Faith once put it, at least she's a hot chick with superpowers. What more could I aspire to be for a night?

-Kim

1 week follow-up

My dentist uses purple latex gloves. Every time she puts on a new pair I giggle to myself in my head because they remind me of Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. It's nice to have a reminder of something happy in an otherwise bleak, sanitized setting.

Today I went for a checkup to see how my healing has been progressing over the last week. The site is still tender when poked at, so she had to use a topical anesthetic on it before stretching my lip out far enough to get a good look. Progress is good but, as expected, I haven't been able to keep it as clean as we would like. So Fatema used a giant plastic syringe to squirt saline into the crevices and clear them out. She also gave me a couple to take home and do the same, which will make my twice-daily teeth cleaning routine a bit more interesting. I can use them to squirt the prescription mouthwash as well, which is now only needed on the surgery site. Since it would stain my other teeth, I've been cleared to go back to brushing and flossing the rest of my mouth and only using the mouthwash on the affected site.

Next week she wants to clean it for me again, and the week after that the stitches will come out. Until then, and perhaps longer, I'm doing all of my chewing on the left side of my mouth. I have at least moved on from just pudding and ice cream, but they're still the easiest thing to eat by far. I can eat real food if I cut it into very tiny pieces first, but it takes so long it doesn't always seem worth the effort. So on the way home I stocked up on more pudding. Shaw's must have known my plans, because it was still on sale--12 pudding cups for $3!

It will probably be next summer before I can bite directly into an apple again, and when that day comes I'm going to go all Barbossa on it.

-Kim

Periodontal Quest: Surgery 1

*Warning: this post contains slightly graphic descriptions of surgery. Do not read while eating.*

Well, the day finally came. After weeks of taking impressions and radiographs (x-rays) and making and changing appointments, my first periodontal bone-grafting surgery is finally behind me. It was quite the experience.

I received a phone call from my dentist Fatema on Thursday afternoon asking if I could come in earlier on Friday (10:00am) to take a couple more impressions and one last radiograph. Apparently all the work we did last time wasn't good enough. That's terribly frustrating, since making the impressions last time was such a pain. This time it actually went much more smoothly. Two on top and two on the bottom, all came out well and we were done. Amazing. Why couldn't that have happened at the last appointment? Having deep enough trays really makes a difference. And before that we did the radiograph. We had already taken shots of my entire mouth piece by piece, but this was a 360 degree scan. I had this done before, when my braces were taken off, and I think when I had my wisdom teeth out. I love how quickly it goes--just stand still and watch a machine circle around my head.

After the impressions they asked me to wait in the lobby while they prepared a stint to take a few measurements. But that took too long, so eventually Fatema came out and said I should just go get lunch. She led me through the complex to a cafeteria where Tufts students eat, so I had my last normal meal surrounded by future dentists.

The surgery took place in a small room just off the large room where all the cubicle-style dental chairs are. There was a large window to my right, and an inspirational poster about teamwork with a picture of a sailboat on the wall in front of me. Before anything else, Fatema took my blood pressure and had me take extra-strength pain relievers. It was an electronic blood pressure cuff that went around my wrist--very high tech and impressive. Not surprisingly, my pulse was a bit fast, since I was nervous at the beginning of this whole process. Then they had to draw some blood, to mix with the bone powder to make the graft material. I don't remember whether I've had blood drawn before, but I was surprised how little it hurt. They actually tried twice on my right arm and finally got the four vials they needed from my left, so now my multiple holes make me look like a drug user. But on the bright side, they only used two of the vials, so they probably won't have to draw any blood for the next surgery.

There were a lot of people in the room throughout this process. It took 3 dentists to draw my blood, plus a couple others running around making sure we had all the supplies we needed. Colette was very nice and talked to me to keep me calm while I waited between steps. Next came the measurements. We had to recheck the depth of recession, plus take a whole new set of measurements using plastic stints molded from the impressions taken earlier. They measured the thickness of my gum tissue by measuring how many millimeters away from the plastic stint it was, and then comparing that to the distance to the bone once it was uncovered.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

They didn't give me anything to make me loopy, so I was aware of what was going on the whole time. I was, however, completely numbed and couldn't feel a thing. Fatema and Michael, the assisting dental student, were impressed by the fact that I didn't even flinch when they injected the anesthetic. Once I was all numbed, we only had to wait for Dr. Griffen to arrive to conduct the surgery. Dr. Griffen wears glasses, so I was able to watch the entire process in the reflection.

Have you seen the advertisements for the show House MD, or any other medical drama? They always have a picture of the cast peering down over the camera as if they were examining a patient. Well, now I know what that feels like. I had Dr. Griffen doing the surgery, Fatema and Michael assisting, and 2-3 other dental students observing. They were also filming the procedure and taking photographs throughout.

The first step was to cut my gum tissue away from the teeth and bone. Dr. Griffen gave a lecture on his favorite tool and how to use it as he worked, cutting and peeling the very thin tissue. Once the flap was cut away, Fatema used a scaling tool to clean the plaque and remaining fragments of tissue off the bone so that the bone graft would be able to stick effectively. They also put the plastic stint back on and took new measurements. While this was going on, one of the other students was mixing my centirfuged blood platelets with bone powder to create the grafting material. Dr. Griffen used a tweezer shaped implement to put this gelatinous material into the areas where my bone had receded. Over this they placed a membrane that looked remarkably like tissue paper. This membrane had to be stitched together to keep the bone graft stable, along with another layer of a material I can't spell. The thread used was rather yellowish. The thread used next to hold the gum tissue back in place over the graft was purplish.

This description reads far too quickly. The whole process took from 1:00pm until after 5:00pm. Between the stages I had to be reminded to relax my jaw, I got so used to holding it open. But by the end I could barely hold still for the stitches, I had been lying there so long.

The surgery reminded me of book binding and manuscript repair, oddly enough. The membrane used to cover the bone graft looked like the Japanese paper used to repair torn manuscripts, and the skin flaps were stitched together much the same way the text block of a book is created. These are the thoughts that ran through my mind as I watched Dr. Griffen put these foreign materials in my mouth to strengthen my tissue. Not being able to feel what was being done, I had a disconnected interest in the reflection, imagining it was someone else's mouth being cut into and messed around with. At least until the end. As Dr. Griffen was putting in the very last stitch I started to get some feeling back. It didn't so much hurt, but the feeling of thread moving through my gum tissue was bizarre to say the least. They gave me another shot before tying it off.

Christina came to meet me at the clinic and brought me home on the T by way of a CVS to get my prescriptions filled. My orders were to keep ice on it and eat only cold, soft foods. This meant, of course, that my dinner consisted entirely of ice cream. That was the best part of the whole experience.

I was still partly numb when I finally went to bed, and the pain meds they gave me have been keeping things under control. It's hard to eat--I mostly have to drink my nutrition, though I can chew on the left side. I expected there to be more pain, but thus far I only have a very dull ache when I near the 8 hour interval between doses of the meds they gave me. Perhaps I just have a high pain tolerance, or it could just be that I heal quickly. Tierney has decided to call me Wolverine, because of the bone grafting. It's beginning to seem more appropriate, and the experience is giving me story ideas. At least something will come out of the experience.

-Kim