Posts made by surreality

@Ganymede I am happy to hear this. I know it's been a hard issue to consider, and I hope it means you're feeling at least a little better about things.

So, had nothing gone wrong, I would have all the implant work, top and bottom, done now.

Instead, there are still temporaries up top that keep being trimmed down as new and interesting(1) problems keep coming up.

For all that I am a bigmouth, my actual mouth is fucking tiny. Way tiny. 'Use the kiddie tools' tiny. 'We don't make a mold frame that small so the dentist had to kitbash one' tiny.

This also means 'not a whole lot of bone to fuck around with'.

This also means 'well we don't do implants in tiny children so there are a limited range of sizes for implant posts, and we're already using the very smallest they make and they're still a bit big for you'.

We could have been closer to the finish line here, but the implants on one side failed early in the year, ***avoid this detail dental phobics***

Just before Covid hit, they did bone grafts. There are a lot of options to use here, but I could have gone my whole life not knowing they weren't using coral or the synthetics, but... donor bone. THANKS GUYS NOW I'M FRANKENSTEIN'S CHOMPSTER.

They wanted to check on them bi-weekly to ensure they took... but then everything closed for months. Welp.

Temporary piece cracks AGAIN, and in a way that breaks one of the posts, so it now needs to be replaced. FUCK ME. This 3-6 month process for the top is now on month 14 or 15.

I go in to see what's what. They do xrays and a full 360... I don't actually know if it's a catscan or some kind of head-only MRI, but they do it. 'Welp, the grafts didn't go well, so we can maybe put one post over there and it'll have to do'.

Yesterday -- my poor husband's birthday, no less -- we go in with a plan: remove newly broken post, put in one post in the previously grafted area.

There is suddenly a new plan. Remove the newly broken one and graft that, place the one he knows he can on the other side, AND put in a second over there surrounded by graft material at the same time to all heal up at once.

Again, the moment he starts working, he realizes the scans were not showing him anything remotely like what was going on in there. NOT the first time this has happened; it's happened to him 3x now with me and it's happened with another oral surgeon years ago. My skull is apparently x-ray-defying levels of fucking WEIRD, so he has to improvise along to a plan #3.

I'm further frankenboned. Two new posts are in... one to be placed later, after months of the other graft healing, which, IF EVERYTHING WORKS THIS TIME, means that 3-6 month process will have taken 2 years.

My face is so swollen on the left that, if I look down at the keyboard, I can see how huge my cheek is in my lower peripheral vision, in the way that you can sorta see your nose when glancing in certain directions.

Ow. Ow? Fucking ow.

Frankenbone, titanium and something (some kind of porcelain I think, we couldn't afford the zirconium obvs) teeth, weird custom organ from years ago. This shit is all very Cyberpunk 2020, and while conveniently it is 2020, I would have preferred the magic robospine and those color-changing fingernails from The 5th Element if I had to be a cyborg or a flesh golem.

1. Interesting in that 'may you live in interesting times' sense of the word.

@Ganymede Yeah, doing that. It isn't helping very much, but I am doing that. I'm doing what I can to not give in.

ETA: I also promised the bestie I wouldn't, so there's that.

@mietze Literally, ALL of that. All of it. It's spreading rapidly, and very dangerously. I've also seen many mentions of murder-suicide plans, along with general calls to rally up militia and start killing.

The latter is terrifyingly gleeful. People have dehumanized 'the other' to the extent that it's beyond dangerous.

And it is truly heartbreaking. Many of these groups are drawing people in based on their best instincts -- to protect the vulnerable -- but that impulse is being brutally perverted into something else with an entirely different and horrifying agenda.

Even some of the best instincts are being pursued in ways that are dangerous and counterproductive, and that genuinely breaks my heart.

I keep at it because, well, like I said: the 'I'm worthless garbage to the world no matter what the reality of who I actually am is' is so ingrained now that even if I'm scared, it's pretty hard to care very much about anything happening to me any more. (If it does, well, at least I stop hurting and being frustrated all the time.)

I'm pretty much here:

@GreenFlashlight Tend the to the water! No worries.

I see what you're getting at, and agree that's a part of it.

There are other aspects to it that come from intentional cruelty, a need for superiority, justifications for abusive behavior, fear-mongering, and 'othering'/dehumanizing that are sometimes quite shockingly blatant.

@GreenFlashlight Yep. That's a big part of why it's been depressing.

It is very hard to get away from dealing with and healing from a certain kind of abuse when it is endemic in every aspect of society at the moment. Everything becomes a reminder, and feels more hopeless with every passing day.

I've started doing some -- in the grand scheme of things, very minor -- work combatting conspiracy theories and the damage being done to people because of them in recent months. (Anything from swarm harassment campaigns to death threats to... worse.) Seeing my parents start to get sucked in showed me how pervasive it is, and that it's a non-trivial and important thing that not enough people are trying to help combat.

I thought I got both of them out of it. Apparently, only my Dad. My mother is bought in, even if she doesn't realize the info she's parroting is coming from those sources, and she's to the point at which it's completely impenetrable. I can't help her, and it's killing me. I'm losing my mother because of a bunch of crazy grifters' lies and propaganda. (Our relationship isn't perfect, but I love my mom, and she's in her late 70s; it's not like there's much time left here with her, and losing lots of it to this is killing me.)

It is also not exactly easy to do. A number of these people are violent, very scary, and simply love doxxing and making serious threats. I'm a known chickenshit about this stuff (see posts about stalker person from whenever).

But, like... somebody's gotta? And not enough people are. And while, rationally, I know it's stupid and untrue, I've internalized enough of the 'I am a worthless pile of shit that I deserve nothing but abuse and people crowing about how it's delightful when I'm abused or is some expression of great justice when someone lies about me or deliberately harasses or hurts me or whatever' message to know there's no real loss if something happens to me vs. it happening to someone else.

Realizing you spent years on something and it only took a few bad actors to fuck it all up really blows.

I honestly don't know why people are so comfortable lying, but I see it echoed in every facet of society lately, so I can't even get away from what they did.

I really don't bother getting out of bed most days any more.

Today is National Suicide Prevention Day.

We shouldn't need a day to remind us to check in on people, but if there are folks out there you care about that you know are struggling and you haven't heard from them in a while, it's as good an excuse as any to check in on them if you can.

This isn't an irk, and anger is a much better fit.

The mental health crisis in this country is downright terrifying.

That it's led to people being taken in by dangerous conspiracy theories and all manner of grift throughout the pandemic is not just scary, but tragic on an incredible scale.

Only one antibiotic left after the most recent whee-fun surgery.

They'll need to do more later, much more extensive, but a notable end point to this stopgap slice-and-dice is very welcome.

@chibichibi I am so sorry to hear this. It's utterly heartbreaking.

2020 needs an undo button.

@Derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Ganymede

Because if we could turn off our ability to care this would not be an issue.

This is pretty much the shape of my universe these days.

Where do we get that Vampire Diaries universe off switch? Because...

@Sunny Apologies, not the intent -- though, yep... that's how easy it is for good intentions to go sideways. <virtual hug sent>

@Roz Very much so, re: meant well, failed. ***NSFW content***

@Roz I watched it shortly after it came out, and again more recently. ***NSFW content***

@Roz It is a very hard watch, but even more important than it is hard.

There's also a blue-violet version that's very 'starry night sky'.

Steering very religious conservative family members away from falling into the pit trap that is Qanon is twice as exhausting as it is time-consuming, but I managed to pull it off.

I still wake up tired every morning since.

Since I was mentioned, iirc HP understood it was bs behavior on the caller-out's part when the situation was described? I am barely peeking in at the moment because dental ow ow ow and a sudden depressive spiral, though, so... I really don't want to dig for it. It's somewhere... <hand flappies> ...back there in the thread. I might be misremembering, but the bits of my brain that are currently functioning lean 70% in that direction, anyway.

@Rinel True enough, though it aligns with an ex of mine that called the bible 'a great sword and sorcery novel'.