Second Impressions, Root Canal Yikes!

The second week of classes is over. Due to the Labor Day holiday, my organic lab didn't meet. Our first meeting is this week, which means I should probably do the reading and pre-lab sometime tonight or tomorrow. I do a fair amount of practice problems, if a fair amount equals I see myself running through reams of paper. I'm sorry, forests! I'm sure there is a direct correlation between your grade in organic chemistry and physics, as it is with most math and physical sciences/chemistry classes, and the amount of paper you expend doing practice problems. I do the textbook problems for organic, plus I use the Klein book, which is excellent. I'm going to e-mail him sometime this semester and tell him how much he rocks at explaining stuff.

Physics is going well. The recitation is interesting, and we get to see any problems we have difficulty with solved by the instructor. She is very good at explaining things, but so far it isn't that difficult - we are only doing kinematics in 1 or 2 dimensions, non-rotating. Basically it is a lot of velocity, acceleration, time, etc. Some problems give velocity and time and you have to find the acceleration, but there are about four equations we use and depending on the given quantities, you pick which one is appropriate, and they recommend drawing a picture. The instructor for recitation is also good about posting grades on Blackboard pretty quickly. Each meeting is worth 20 points (10 for attending the entire time, 10 for a quiz and up to +3 for participation, good explanations or good questions, but can't exceed 20 points in a given meeting). I got a 19 for the first meeting, so I assume I got 9 points on the quiz. I probably got points off for taking shortcuts, not including units or using the wrong amount of significant figures. I guess the important thing is I know how to do the problems but I need to include everything they will be looking for to show my process in getting to the answer. I will have to see what I did.

Tomorrow, I am having a root canal at 8 a.m. sharp. I swear my dental hygiene the past few years has been as good as a dentist's kid's, but I admit for a long time I did not floss regularly, but I did brush and use mouthwash. What that lead to was that I had an inlay done on one of my back molars a year or two ago, and recently developed an abscess on the gum underneath it. After calling my dentist, but speaking to the office manager/scheduler, she said the dentist had looked at the panoramic x-rays from my last cleaning a few weeks ago and thinks I will need a root canal. He called it a prescription for Pen VK for me, so I have to take 500 mg tabs every 6 hours, for 10 days. It kind of sucks not being able to sleep for more than 6 hours since I don't want to miss a dose, but the abscess has grown smaller. The office manager said the worst-case scenario was that they would need to do a root canal, which we went ahead and scheduled, and then crown it. I get a 15% discount since I'm a cash patient, since I have no major restorative dental insurance, just 2/year cleanings and oral exams, so the root canal, if it needs to be done, will be a little under $1k. The post-fill and crown would be an additional $1500ish. I hate the D.C. area sometimes, but I'm sure some other areas have higher dental costs.

I complained about the $2500 quote, considering he hadn't mentioned the possibility of needing a root canal at my last cleaning when the panoramic x-rays were taken. She talked to the dentist and they agreed to drill through the inlay and try to put a filling in its place post-root canal.

I've never had a root canal. Should I be scared? :(

The finale of True Blood is tonight. I admit it, I watch it. I watched the first season and I've read all the books too, my sister got me hooked on them. It's interesting to see how Alan Ball adapts the books into the series, I think he has made some great choices so far (sparing Lafayette, turning Tara from an olive-skinned white woman into a black woman, and a few others). Maybe I'll do the organic lab stuff after True Blood, if I don't watch Hung. Remember, it's not TV... it's HBO­™.