Nerve diversity

kw: experiences, dentistry, medicine

I had a permanent crown fitted on a lower molar yesterday, then spent much of the day in a daze, while the anesthetic wore off. I have a rare condition that makes it very hard to "numb" the molars in my lower jaw (the mandible). The nerve to the tooth's pulp enters the jaw far, far back behind the bend of the bone, where it is nearly impossible to reach with a needle full of xylocaine. In most folks (98-99%) the nerve enters just in front of the wisdom tooth, near the tip of its root.

As a result of this unusual innervation, the dentist first has to numb the gums and the tissue at the back of the mouth, then with a much longer needle, try for the nerve. He also used a faster-acting anesthetic in a ligament injector, which forces the stuff between the tooth and the ligament supporting it, so that some will reach the nerve where it enters the tooth—you hope.

The whole side of my head got numb, all right, but when it came time to grind off the temporary crown's cement, I could still feel it. I didn't tell the dentist, because he'd already spent half an hour getting me anesthetized. And we'd been through this before, when he ground off the tooth's enamel and formed a stub for mounting the crown in the first place. I toughed it out then, and did so this time. I could tell that the tooth was partly numbed, but I could still feel the work going on.

When everything was finished, I told him that if I ever need a root canal on a lower molar, it will have to be done under general anesthesia. I told him he had been able to remove most of the sensation, but not all, so I could bear it. Then I went home and to bed. A two-hour nap later, a little sensation had returned, so I had miso soup and some yogurt, neither of which required chewing. I wasn't confident I could eat without chomping out a piece of cheek until eight hours after the dental work. Not only had I had 2-3 times the normal amount of anesthetic, but I get over anesthesia slowly.

This isn't the first time I've encountered odd nerve hookups. When I began having cancer pain twelve years ago, I felt it in the center-left abdomen, where the stomach is, and thought it was an ulcer. Eventually, we found out it was appendicitis, from the cancer eating at the appendix (after growing to the size of a fist in the cecum). The locus of damage was eight inches from where I was feeling it. I just have a goofy nerve connection. Well, the cecum, appendix and a foot or so of both colon and ileum are now gone, so I hope the rest of my nerves are working properly. But there are no guarantees!

Gotta love this molecule

kw: product testing, experiences

I am very susceptible to athlete's foot. For years I used Desenex®, with the active ingredient Miconazole, to keep it at bay and to (barely) drive it out when I got an infestation. Some months back, I tried an ointment, Neosporin AF®, which also contains Miconazole. Equally slow, but also effective.

Then, we picked up some Lamasil AF® spray, which contains Tolnaftate (shown). I used it for my most recent infestation, beginning a little less than two weeks ago. Boy, is it fast! 24 hours for the raw skin to de-inflame, and about a week to clear the infestation up completely. That compares with at least four weeks of diligent use needed for Miconazole to work. Great stuff.

Ignoring the dentist catches up with me

kw: experiences

This morning I had a root canal, my first ever. I'd missed a couple of years of getting regular cleanings and x-rays, and a big cavity had reamed out a molar. I guess I've become one of those "I told'ja so" stories.

I was more wiped out than I expected, and spent the rest of the day in bed, until midafternoon. There went the workday.

Getting around a Picasa limitation

kw: observations, experiences, software

Those of us who use Picasa from Google to manage our photos got a recent upgrade, which some folks have been none to pleased about. About ten days ago I also had an anomaly with it, but I found a way around it.

If Picasa is already managing thousands of photos, and you upgrade to version 3.5 or 3.6, which has the new face recognition feature, it does not complete its face indexing task. In my case, it trundled along for about twelve hours, got to the point where it was 54% done, by its own estimation, stating that it had indexed more than 9700 faces and had 8800 or so to go, and it stalled. All the counters stopped moving, hard disk activity slowed and stopped. I had been putting names to faces for a few hours as it worked, and I kept doing so. But it didn't work through any of the remaining faces.

I let it sit there for the next twelve hours in that condition (I just let it run all night). No change. At that point, I closed the program, shut down the computer, and went to work. When I started Picasa up that evening, it was waiting for me to continue to identify faces. I spent several hours finishing the ones it had found, and that was that. I could tell it had missed quite a few.

A few days later, the big snowstorm came (Feb 6), and I was snowed in for two days. I took the chance to copy my whole photo archive to a newer computer. There were just a few photos on this one, and Picasa 3.6 had already scanned for faces, and I'd identified them. I got the DVD's out with my photo collection, and loaded a year at a time. I would load a year, then Picasa would gather the photos, scanning for faces. The first year, it left 55 faces untouched, even after I had put names to all the others. I just loaded the next year, to see what would happen. This time, it cross-checked them all, and thereafter, it always completed its face checking. I did the name tagging year-by-year.

So when I was done, I had every face either name-tagged or Ignored. The process took all of one day and a little of the next. This is the work-around then: move your photos to data DVD's first, then upgrade Picasa. Put them back a thousand pix or so at a time. Organizing by years makes that a simple process. You'll need a couple hours to tag each year's photos (if you are as active a photographer as I am).

I must say, other than this limitation, I like how this feature works. Picasa's face-matching routines let it present you with a face that often represents a group of similar views of the same person. By tagging the one you see, you tag the whole group. The more faces you tag, the more accurate its picks become. Of course, you still need to go through each Face Album later to find mis-tagged faces and re-tag them. This is a one-thumb-up upgrade.

The glove on the gearshift

kw: experiences, ideas

One consequence of my hand operation is wearing a brace at least part of the time, during my convalescence. I find that could be months. This leads to curious circumstances.

This cold morning, the first day I got to drive myself to work in 18 days, I found the <20°F steering wheel and gearshift too cold to hold without gloves. But with the brace on, I couldn't put a glove on my right hand. I've long since got used to keeping my right hand in my lap and steering with the left, after two years of pain and therapy that led up to the surgery. But my car is stick shift, five-on-the-floor (my wife's car also). I can't do all that shifting with my left hand (ever tried?).

It didn't take me long to realize the glove for my right hand could still work, on the gearshift lever! So that's how I drove to work. It's good to know the old neurons can still think outside the box on occasion.