battle of midway

November 23, 2011

Last week was my Mid-Service Training, which means I’m midway through this thing. Which means I have one more year! That is kind of scary. Last week was kind of scary also. Part of MST is meetings with dental and medical. Nobody likes a checkup and being a volunteer doesn’t change that.

My medical was fine. They took plenty of samples from me and so far I’ve not been told I’m dying. Now to the dental. Every batch hears horror stories from the batch before about how the Philippines ruined people’s teeth. Cavities all over the place. I came into this thing with soft porous teeth and already have cavities all over the place, so I was nervous. Well, for one of the first times ever I got a no cavity report. Well a no new cavity report. One of my fillings is being funny, but that is fixable. I just have to wait to get dental work done on my evil tooth.

There has been lots of work done on this thing and it is still nasty. There is an infection up in there. So I’m either going to have to get another root canal, which involves taking off my crown and risking the tooth cracking and having to get pulled. Or I could get another surgery on it, which involves the same risks. Or I can just get rid of the thing.* I had a long talk with the dentist, in one of the fanciest dental chairs I’ve ever been in in all of my life (granted, I’m from Wyoming where technology is slow), who went to school at the University of the Philippines, then went to more school to become an endodentist at the University of Pennsylvania, and then went on to teach at NYU and we filed a report to go the root canal work. Now I’m just waiting to hear back from Washington D.C. Goodness me.

After all this happening we went to the actual MST conference. We were heading out of the city right when Hillary was there doing all her important things. I did sleep just around the corner from her. The conference was good. The first time I’ve seen some people since last August. We’ve all come a long way, and we’ve all got a long way to go. Here’s to another great year!

*Since writing this at lunch I’ve learned the DC decided it would just be best to pull it and give me a bridge. They better let me keep the crown; it is probably worth a pretty penny or two.