That's a Mouthful

If you go waaaaay back to November of 2022, you'll see a post, "Dentist!" It was quite the experience, and I decided I'd had enough of these oral adventures. It was time to see the dentist regularly. I could at least bite things with my front teeth and chew on the right side of my mouth; I should try to keep the teeth that remained. Thus, after that agonizing visit, I scheduled a cleaning.

But in case you haven't been paying attention to my stories, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." That John Lennon quote fit my "cleaning" visit to a tee. Y'see, there's been quite the build-up of calculus around my front teeth. Yes, calculus. "It's not just math!" Calculus is hardened deposits of plaque.

Okay, let's back up. When my left foot was amputated, I went six months without taking even minimal care of my teeth. I was so overwhelmed by my struggle with all of the other forms of bodily maintenance that my teeth were ignored. That's when the plaque started building up. Once it had a foothold... (A foothold in my mouth? Weird.) Once it had a foothold, the plaque continued to build-up, even when I started brushing regularly again.

Following so far? Good. Because now we have to add other complications to the scenario.

1. Receding gums runs in my family. My brother was wearing partials in his early 40's, and both of my parents had full dentures by age 50.
2. The medications I take can dry out one's mouth. I'm constantly drinking something throughout the day. Even when I wake in the middle of the night, the first thing I do is reach for the drink I have at my bedside. Dry Mouth: It's a lifestyle all its own.
3. Diabetes. Diabetes, diabetes, diabetes. It was mentioned at least FOUR times during this "cleaning" visit. Without ever specifying what it was about diabetes that added to my problems, it was made clear that 48.5 years of this gold-star chronic illness had contributed to the poor condition of my mouth.

I didn't need a professional to see the rather extreme situation in my front teeth. My gums had been pushed way down, with a lot of calculus at the base of the teeth. Even with that hardened substance's presence, my teeth could be wiggled with just a gentle nudge. Which led me to ask, "If you clean away the calculus, will my teeth just fall out?"

Y'know, it's a little sad when the dental assistant working with you gets excited that YOU reached a conclusion before they could mention it. The dentist was proud, too. And the answer was, "Yes." I asked if they could at least clear away the calculus that would lead to painful gingivitis, and they said my teeth would likely fall out if they did that little bit.

So what? It's a tooth. If it looks like the plan is going to be a complete removal of all teeth, what's the big deal if some fall out?

Oh, nothing special. Just an increased risk of infection because - you guessed it - diabetes.

By the way, that was the plan we discussed. My gums had seriously receded, even where there was no calculus. All but two of my teeth moved when nudged. Things can get caught in teeth that are as loose as mine. Those things can lead to infection, and often do. I have to lose the teeth. All of them.

This news coming on the heels of the EMG results has knocked me flat mentally. Well, not just this, because Dunder Klutz here stumbled after a shower, and my foot smashed into the rather sharp corner of a shelving unit in my apartment. To be specific, it was the inside of my foot, where a particularly large callus resides. Well, resided - past tense. I didn't think much of that collision... until I spotted the blood stains in my carpet. Seems that after my shower had softened that callus, the impact sheered it off, leaving me with a bloody mess of a wound.

So... Very little muscle left in my hands... Serious wound on my foot that I didn't feel, thanks to diabetic neuropathy... I have to lose all of my teeth... Yeah, I'm feeling the weight of existence more than usual. What's more, I'm going to need dentures and I can't afford them. So what if I'm a diabetic that needs to eat? I could live on mashed potatoes and peanut butter, right? I'm going to have to beg and plead with friends to help me get prosthetic choppers, since Medicare doesn't offer dental insurance. 

~as sarcastically as possible~ Life is just grand.

Let's change the subject entirely. Remember when I advertised the scantily clad young woman? Well, this isn't her:

Say hi to Keet!

This gorgeous young woman is Rachel, or Keet, as she often says very quickly at the start of her videos. I think she's only 17 at the moment, but I could be wrong. She has a rather serious case of Tourette's Syndrome. Her tics can be quite entertaining because her voice pitches up when she experiences echolalia. She sounds adorable! But she's suffering. She has no control over the sudden movements or outbursts. She posted a video that was only a small portion of a four-hour tic attack. If you want to follow her, then I'll link to her TikTok. But behave. She's underage. She's been bullied. She's been accused of faking. She'll continue to experience these things from a variety of jerks for the rest of her life. Don't be a part of that. Listen to what she has to say and bask in her beauty. Don't be mean or creepy.

You've Got a Lot of Nerve!

Probably more than me, anyway.

Yes, it's been a minute since I've written here. I blew a mental gasket, followed by the realization that I'd run out of things to discuss. I mean, it's a blog about diabetes. To come here and rant about politics or religion would be inappropriate. "In my next post, I'll tell you about my favorite science fiction novels." Not what this blog was created for.

Yesterday, 28 February 2023. however, brought something old/new to my life: confirmation of how bad my neuropathy really is.

Now I know it's been bad. In the last decade, I've gone from calling it "diabetic neuropathy" to "advance diabetic neuropathy." That's because of the diagnosis of Charcot foot. It takes a lot of nerve damage for bones to start drifting, suffer minor dislocations, develop microfractures, and eventually start fusing together. For some reason, knowing all of that didn't upset me all that much. It was an inconvenience. It sucked. But it had next to no emotional impact.

Yesterday was different. I went for a test called an EMG, also known as an Electromyography. Oh, if you're not taking care of your diabetes, get ready for this bundle of fun! They place a few sensors in various spots, and then send a pulse of electricity through specific points to measure the nerve and muscle responses. The test has two parts. The first is when they deliver little jolts through the surface of your skin. The second involves inserting a needle to measure electrical activity in various muscles.

The doctor and nurse would say late in my visit that I was their most fun patient. I tried joking about everything. For example, the doctor was Muslim and I was brought up Jewish, so when she had to deliver a particularly painful jolt several times, I blurted, "This is because I'm Jewish, isn't it!" And during the surface shocks, when the nurse was getting no responses, I had a whole shtick about the doctor berating her about wasting time by running the test on a corpse. "Living patient is in room two. Dead person room one. Go test living patient." (I used a Russian accent. I don't know why.)

Those lack of responses... When the nurse had to turn the electrode all the way up and was barely getting a response... I may have been making jokes, but jolting a nerve that hard and seeing a flatline was bad news. I'd had this test in the past and can't recall it ever hurting. I believe they use microvolts. When cranked to 100 and shocking the nerve several times, only to see nothing on the graph was disheartening.

Usually when I go have tests like this, I'm out the door when they're done and I get the results some time later. Not this time. The doctor was able to tell me that, yes, I do have carpal tunnel in my right wrist. Whether or not I'd benefit from surgery would depend on an orthopedic consult. As for my diabetic neuropathy... It's bad. Very bad. The doctor said, "There's almost no muscle left," but then immediately corrected herself, "Well, there's very little muscle left. You obviously still have enough to move your fingers."

You obviously still have enough to move your fingers.

There's some Stephen King levels of horror in that statement. Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption or read Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption? Those don't seem like horror stories, do they. You have to consider the author. King often seeks to find the worst fears a person could think of and use those fears as the basis for stories. Imagine being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with circumstantial evidence stacked against you, and because the shock of events has caused you to shut down emotionally, you seem cold and uncaring during the murder trial. A murder you DID NOT commit. You're found guilty and shipped off to prison, where you're promised three hot meals a day, a bed, and a whole lot of new friends you'd run away from if you had the opportunity. That's terrifying. That's what "Stephen King levels of horror" means.

You obviously still have enough to move your fingers.

Imagine the alternative. "You don't have enough muscle to move your fingers properly anymore." To an extent, I'm already there. Holding out my hand, fingers straight and held together, you'd notice that my pinkies and ring fingers on both hands can't close the space between fingers completely. When I struggle to try to make them do what I want, the fingers tremble feebly, refusing to do what my brain is telling them to do.

Dead muscles. Immobility. The muscles have atrophied, not because I was inactive, but because my brain couldn't stay in touch with my muscles.

The doctor DID compliment me for taking steps some time ago to find a fun way of working my hands as a form of physical therapy. I bought 460 2x4 Lego bricks for somewhere around $30. Almost every day, I take apart the last thing I made and build a new thing. Think there isn't much to be built with only one type of brick? Let's take a look.

You might be wrong.

So that's about all I have for the moment. This realization of exactly how screwed my hands are has been emotionally draining. And until I think of something more to say, or someone actually asks me a question about diabetes, this blog will return to it's suspended animation.