I just got home from work, opened the new New Yorker, and sat down with the magazine and a glass of Merlot. I started flipping through the pages when this cartoon slapped me in the face:
“Your health crisis continues to unfold.”
You’d think that once you’re diagnosed with a disease like Parkinson’s, it becomes your sole and permanent health story until you’re close to the end, when all sorts of other complications kick in.
It’s not that simple.
You get Parkinson’s, and you still lead a life of unfolding, unrelated medical issues.
To wit:
I’ve been nursing a cold for the past week. It’s a drag and it’s keeping me from the gym, but if only that and Parkinson’s were my sole complaints.
Here’s the bizarre twist. A few weeks ago a filling in my upper back molar came loose, and I went to my regular dentist to get a replacement. The dentist looked in my mouth and said, “I can’t replace the filling because the whole tooth is cracked. You need to go to an oral surgeon and have the whole tooth yanked out.”
Fine.
I went to the oral surgeon. (This was also the day I was off my Parkinson’s meds for a research experiment at Columbia University – click here for that drama.) Before he shot me up with Novocain, the surgeon said there was a 10% chance that when he removed my tooth, there’d be a hole left in my upper gums that would connect my mouth to my sinus cavity. The hole would heal, or it wouldn’t heal.
It didn’t heal.
How do I know?
Today after lunch I was about to work one-on-one with a 4th Grade boy on an independent study project. I had been drinking a lot of coffee and was worried my breath would kill him first.
“Just a minute, Harrison,” I said, and I popped a half dozen Tic Tacs in my mouth. You know Tic Tacs – they’re those hard little breath mints, each the size of a lemon seed.
I sat down with Harrison, swished the Tic Tacs around in my mouth, and said, “Let’s get started.”
And then…a Tic Tac worked its way into the hole where my tooth had been. It somehow wriggled around deep inside my gums and got wedged between the gum and the root of the neighboring tooth.
I could feel the bulge with my tongue, and even with my finger when I pressed the outside of my cheek.
Of course this was and still is driving me crazy. Did I mention that Parkies are prone to all kinds of anxiety attacks? Here we are.
As I share an office space with the school nurse, I told her about it. She said I should either go back to the dentist or wait until the mint melts underneath my gums on its own accord. I chose to wait.
As I drove home, I kept putting my finger inside my mouth at every stoplight, trying to move the Tic Tac back to the opening where my molar used to be, but it won’t budge.
So there you have it: Parkinson’s disease. A lingering cold. A Tic Tac stuck beneath my gums.
And a cartoon in the mystery 8-ball New Yorker. (Bingo! Bingo!)
