Titles, Inc.

All For Eve's Fruit

The physical therapist replied, “I have an excellent doctor for you” when I complained, between counting my pelvic arches (2, 3, 4…), that I think I have TMJ. 

So I made an appointment for 10AM, and actually got there early.  He was not yet open.  No neighborhood stores were open at 9:30 either,  but I peered through the boutique windows, and then came upon the open Post Office.  So I got on line.  I can always use more stamps, and I killed some time choosing among the commemoratives offered.  And I got more of the flat rate boxes the PO has been pushing in all their entertaining TV commercials.  The boxes were cumbersome carrying back to the car, but at 10AM exactly I was at the door again.

I am lying back in the baby-blue upholstered dental chair, and I explain to the doctor, “I can’t open my mouth wide enough to bite into an apple.”  He says, “So why don’t you just cut it up?”  At that point I should have said, “Oh thank you,” and walked away to find someone who would give me the answer I wanted, “Let’s see whether I can help you with that.”  Or maybe they can’t. 

I continued to list my symptoms, “At night sometimes my ear aches, my jaw hurts, my tooth aches all here on the right.”  He says, “Stop telling me all that and let me focus.”

My physical therapist, Dr. David, always asks for details: when did you notice it, how long did it last, what were you doing when the pain started - so much minutia, that I assumed his referral would have the same pattern of query and I was at the ready.

I tried once more.  In a little voice I said, “I noticed that I have been clenching my teeth while I sleep.”  “Ah hah!”  Now he is ecstatic.  “You need a Mouth Guard.”  And the nurse rolls up this formidable machine, and in goes the wad of clay in the mouth, "Pull your lower teeth back, bite down," and then, “Come back in a week.”

A week later I am fitted with this ridiculous upper teeth device which is attached with two hooks.  “Too tight, too tight.”   He removes it, does some grinding.  Again.  “Too tight, too tight.”   He says, “You’ll get used to it.  Here let me show you how to get it out.  Use this finger nail and pull.”  “I can’t get it off!  I can’t.”  Disgusted he pulls at it with his nail, and it takes some effort for him to remove it.  He works on it some more.  It’s still too tight.  “I won’t wear it.  I don’t want it.” 

“It will loosen up as you wear it.”  “So make it loose right now.”  “If I make it loose, it will fall off.”  “I hate it.”  If I were not reclining, I do believe this is where I would stamp my foot.  He works a bit on the metal clips.  Snaps it back in.  “You will get used to it,” he says adamantly.  Shoves a hand mirror into my fist and says, “Look while you take it out.” 

With the mirror in hand, I see a protruding pink plastic on this devices sticking out in front of my teeth.  “Look,” I howled, “I can’t close my mouth over this!”  He insists I can, so I pull my lips over it, and he concedes that it does, indeed, protrude.   He grinds it back.  In the mouth again.  “It’s got a big lump at the roof of my mouth.”  “It’s supposed to.”  This I don’t believe, but I do believe I’ve exhausted his patience.  I make an exaggerated show of pulling hard at the device to remove it, and he says, “Come back in a month for a check-up.”

That night, I do indeed get used to it.  I will let you know whether all these peripheral symptoms go away.  And I will give it the apple test.

But the only apple I want to eat is wrapped in caramel and studded with nuts, and with a wooden spike jutting up out of it.  If I have to, I will cut it in pieces, as directed.

---Florence

 

 

She's In The Navy

It didn’t exactly look like a uniform, but there is her name on a tag at her right shoulder, and two ribbons on the left.  She said with a smile, “I’m just looking.  Is that all right?  I love book stores.”  I assured her it was fine.

After restraining myself a few long minutes I asked her whether she was Military.  She said she was Navy, going to school at Great Lakes.  (That’s Great Lakes Naval Station in North Chicago, IL, the Navy’s headquarters for training.) 

We discussed her chic suit (well of course you talk about clothes first).  She said the uniform was a rather new style.  I told her I was jealous at how well the beige jacket and black pants fit.  She said they measure you every which way, so it had better fit well, and the white tee was also worn with the more familiar fatigues.  The flat little hat that looks so rakish when she modeled it for me is called a cover.  Cover 1 on the head, Cover 2 folded and down.  Also known as garrison cap.  A black coat folded over her arm.

And the ribbons?  One was for marksmanship with the 9mm, the other was National Defense ribbon issued during wartime.

The important things having been established, I asked casually, and what will you be doing in the service?

“I am a mortician,” she said happily.  She’s seen my astonishment on many faces before, so she elaborated.  “I always wanted to be a mortician.  I felt it as a “calling.”  Even as a young person, I knew the way I wanted to be helpful was to be a mortician.  “Your mother…?” I asked.  “Oh, she wanted me to be a pharmacist like she is, but how boring is that?”  (I forgot what her father does.) 

I couldn’t recognize any regional accent so I asked where she grew up.  “Los Angeles.  I will be going home for Thanksgiving then coming back to finish school here.”  There are 38 students in the class, five of them female.  Our young lady is Valedictorian, graduating at the head of her class at mortuary school.

I asked, not knowing quite how to put it, “Is there a common trait in the group, something you share?”  She said, “We all share a great sense of humor!”  That seemed a joke, right there.  She went on, “We are in it like any career.  Some, like me, want to be doing something to help people, some do it for the money, and some because they don’t want a job dealing with a lot of people.”

Christina had gone from high school into a two year program of Mortuary Science, in LA, that further required two years of internship with funeral homes.  She studied anatomy, embalming science, chemistry.  She has an Embalmer’s license and a Funeral Director license. 

The funeral home where she held a job was owned by a Navy veteran who urged her to join the Corps and serve as a mortician.  She didn’t think of it seriously until he died.  She acted as one of his pall bearers, and as she was walking with him, she thought, “Yes, I will.  I will join the Navy.”  And she did. 

In the Corps school she has now trained as a medic, and on graduation she will be qualified to work in a Navy hospital to attend patients when she is not needed as a mortician.

We talked about the dead soldiers returned from overseas.  She told me a minimum of embalming is done overseas, and it is the family’s choice how to take care of the body after he/she is returned.  “Some choose closed casket.  Others ask that we prepare the body for viewing.  I can do extensive repair, I have had that kind of experience working at the funeral home even before this.”  She doesn’t know which military hospital she will be assigned to after graduation.

She mentioned a serious boyfriend, a longshoreman back in LA.  I asked how that works long distance. She said they visit each other.  She is obligated to serve for five years.  She expects she might move up in rank and make the Navy her career.  The alternative is to become a civilian again and own a funeral home, or she can do that after a long service in the Navy.  Even at 29, she is very young in appearance and enthusiasm.  She has pride and dignity.

She said, “I feel so lucky.”

---Florence

 

Everybody Does it Differently

The orthopedic doctor recommended an epidural injection and physical therapy.  I canceled the epidural because it was scheduled the day the library counts on me to help price its thousands of books for the big Book Sale.  I wore my weight-lifter belt and I was quite comfortable.  But I did go to the physical therapist the next day.

The physical therapist is diagnosing my major back/hip/thigh discomfort. I tell him, “When it doesn’t hurt, I am fine.’’  That doesn’t help him.  I say, “When it hurts, I list to the left side, like this,” assuming a drunken posture.  “Sometimes I can straighten up by climbing up a wall.” and going to a wall, I let my fingers creep up until I’m in a long stretch.  “Very good clue, that tells me a lot,” and he makes marks on his pad.  “Lean forward.”  I hang down, “How far forward?” I ask   He says as far as you can go, so I touch the floor.  Why did that surprise him?  He said, “Lean back.”  I arch my back and lean way back.  “Does that hurt?” he asks worried.  “No.”  

These are Tai Chi movements.  Pick up the Ocean, Show it to Heaven.  Then I realize it has been too long since I met with a group to do Tai Chi.  Our wonderful teacher and guru, Frank, whom we followed to the many facilities as each closed,  left the area and for a long time four of us continued to meet at the Mall to go through the form together.  One after the other, they broke a hip, a shoulder, an arm, a whatever, until there was no more group. 

I sporadically visited other classes, but I was looking for a teacher who approximated the forms I had already learned.  This visit to PT prompted me to find Frank’s phone number. It was good to hear his voice again.  He is now teaching at a health facility helping cancer patients.  He referred me to a young man who had worked with him, and who teaches in the neighborhood.  I phoned the teacher, and he had a class that very night.  Excited, I called Joan and she’s ready too.  She has a major size van – they camp out, even sleeping in it – so I suggest she pick me up.

Surprisingly, Joan drives cautiously.  She and her husband drive distances, Arizona, Wyoming, so I assumed she’d zip down the road at a clip.  It reminded me of my driving in the city.  I drive as if each intersection is a hazard.  Janey, along in the car with me many years ago, complained, “Ma, you drive like an old lady.”  Shortly after that remark, I got a speeding ticket locally.  I was thrilled.  “Officer,” I said, “I can hardly wait to tell my daughter!”

We got to the Tai Chi class.  The teacher was sweet.  He had had surgery for a brain tumor, he had had epilepsy, he was given five years to live ten years ago.  “Tai Chi saved me.  Tai Chi made me well.”  I asked to see his brain surgery scar.  He wears his hair short and I see it didn’t grow back around the very long crease in his dome.  Joan hung back.  Then he asked what we have done, and I performed Pick up the Ocean, Show it to Heaven, exaggerating because I am such a show-off.  He thought it well done.

Then we started with the class - he had said it was a small group, five at most - but there was just one man there.   The movements were recognizable.  But different.  More limited, more confined.  Smaller.   We followed along through the hour.  It was pleasant.  It was not enough. 

I may have to go to China.

--- Florence