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Adventures in Dentistry

Friday was a little stressful.

We’d had a major network outage on Thursday, so the long-awaited move to production for one of my biggest ongoing projects at work had to be pushed to Friday — and I had a dentist appointment at 3pm, which meant I had to leave work by 2:45 at the latest, which meant that all the planets had to align just right for me to get everything moved into production in time.

I almost didn’t make my deadline. But things came together at the last minute — around 11am, actually, which left me enough time to get everything moved and tested and pass off one final last-minute task to a colleague on my way out the door.

I haven’t checked my work e-mail this weekend (I rarely do), but I’m sure that I’ll go back to work tomorrow to find that one minor (or not-so-minor) detail is keeping everything from getting passed on to the users. Even so, it feels good to have this just about behind me and just about in front of the people who need it.

Stressor #1 out of the way. On to Stressor #2: the dentist.

Of course, I got on I-475 to hightail it to the dentist’s office, and what did I find but bumper-to-bumper traffic. Of course. I contemplated calling and letting the office know that I’d be late, but I knew that their calls go to a central call center, anyway, since they have three or four locations, so by the time my status update got to the people who would need to know, I’d probably be there already. So, I just arrived ten minutes late, and no one seemed to mind.

[ALERT: NEEDLES AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, SHERYL.]

A few minutes after I arrived and checked in, the dental assistant called me back and let me know that she’d be doing my fillings. At this point, I was a little nervous about what was to come, because I’ve heard tales from my co-workers who have been to this same office and had Very Bad Experiences. One guy got injected with anesthetic and his cheek was swollen for a week; another’s wife got her cheek drilled by the dental assistant. So, I made sure to find out who was doing what and confirm which teeth were getting filled. No problems there: the assistant was numbing and injecting, the dentist was drilling, and the assistant would come back to do the actual fillings. OK.

She put the topical numbing jelly on swabs in my mouth and left me with the TV remote for a few minutes, to wait for the gel to take effect.

My dentist’s office is pretty keen: they have wall-mounted flat-panel TVs with cable, and they give the patient the remote. In the rooms where they do drilling and filling, they also have TVs mounted on the ceiling above the chair. I saw that HGTV was on the screen above the chair, and it was showing my favorite show that I haven’t seen in forever because the network switched it to weekday afternoons (the bastards). Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember what channel HGTV was, and I didn’t have time to surf to it before the assistant came back at me with Very Long Needles. So, I had HGTV to watch, but Man V. Food on the Travel Channel on the wall TV as its soundtrack.

So, anyway. Very Long Needles. One in the left jaw, waaaay in the back, then one in the right, then another in the left. Pinch, some pressure, you know the drill. Then they left me alone again to wait for the real anesthetic to kick in. (Still never found HGTV.) Eventually, my entire bottom lip went numb, as did my tongue and jaw, all the way up to my left ear.

The rest really wasn’t so bad. The dentist did some drilling, of which I felt nothing; then the assistant did some filling, which took at least twice as long.

What was slightly embarrassing (and very annoying) was having a non-working tongue and bottom lip for FIVE HOURS after I left the dentist’s office. I had to try to communicate with the nice cashier on my way out, to pay my bill and schedule my wisdom teeth extraction.

I was more than a little shell-shocked when the cashier/scheduler told me that there was an opening next Friday with the oral surgeon. Um, okay. That’s a little sooner than I’d been banking on, but I guess we may as well get it over with. I somehow managed to enunciate, “Will I need someone to drive me home?” and was told that the standard procedure is for local anesthetic only, not full sedation, “so it’ll be just like today!”

Since they fly in their oral surgeon from another state, I had to prepay my co-pay for the extraction at the same time as paying the co-pay for the fillings, which hit me for about $200 total. Tell you what, I’m mighty glad to have insurance.

So, think of me this coming Friday at about 10:30am. I’ll be having my right upper and lower wisdom teeth removed by an oral surgeon — and after looking at the results of a Google Image Search for “wisdom tooth extraction,” I think I’ll be keeping my eyes closed as much as possible during the procedure. I really don’t want to see what implements of destruction this doctor will be wielding at my gums.

the ongoing saga of my job

Bittersweet

Just a little over two weeks until I go on vacation; still, there’s a dark cloud hanging over my head. See, my supervisor — my guru, who was on maternity leave when I first joined the company, but has been my go-to fount of knowledge ever since — has given her notice. Her last day is three days after I return from vacation.

I know that my responsibilities are going to change, and that I’m going to have to figure things out on my own now. I’ve been getting much better at that, but there have still been times when I’ve been stumped and have had to ask for her help. I know I’m not the only one on the team who has found her knowledge and assistance invaluable.

It’s not so much that I resent being given additional responsibilities (mainly involving the reporting technology we use) — it’s more that I’m concerned that I won’t be able to fill her shoes in that respect. She knows all the software tricks, or most of them. She knows the business rules behind the projects, and she’s developed relationships with the users. I don’t have that — not yet. I’m going to have to learn when to say I Can, and when to say It’s Not Possible, and how to pick my battles.

I do wish her well in her new job, even though things will be changing for all of us who are left behind. It’s been great to have a supervisor whom I can also count as a friend.

the ongoing saga of my job

Stressing Out

I don’t deal well with stress.

I should be clear: I rarely let stress affect me. I’m generally very good at seeing the Big Picture, taking a deep breath, and realizing that This Too Shall Pass. It’s not until I start falling behind on work, missing or pushing back deadlines, or negatively affecting others’ work that I really start to feel it.

When I worked in Lockbox at Sky Bank, the stress came from being forced to stay at work until ALL the payments were processed; that would often mean an 11-hour workday on Mondays, which eventually translated to physical and mental exhaustion.

My current gig, thankfully, is much less physically and mentally stressful. Generally. Right now, I feel like I keep screwing up, getting things done later than management wants them done, missing simple fixes, asking too many questions about how to do my job. I’ve been told explicitly that “time is of the essence.” Knowing that my shortcomings are keeping others from doing their job on time — thus increasing THEIR stress — well, it stresses me out.

I’ll be glad once I get these reports done. Or once I go on vacation. Whichever comes first.

the ongoing saga of my job, toledo 1 Comment

Snowmageddon 2010

Downtown Toledo

It doesn’t compare to Washington D.C. and surrounding areas, but this is what downtown Toledo looked like after a full day of snow.

My employer let us all go home 45 minutes early today, “in the interest of personal safety,” and I think that anyone who has the option is going to be working from home tomorrow. Not me, though; I don’t have a work laptop. In the (highly unlikely) event that the plow comes down my street tonight, I’ll make the slog in to work tomorrow morning. If not, I’ll take the hit with a personal day, or just hope that my employer decides to call a snow day.

Lucas County is at a Level 2 Snow Emergency right now: “Only people with a real and important need to be out on the roads and streets should do so.” Not sure if that will a.) hold until morning, and/or b.) convince my employer that we should all stay home.

the ongoing saga of my job 2 Comments

Sick Day

On Friday, I had a discussion with one of my co-workers. Seems he’s only taken a handful of sick days in his three years at our work, while I’ve taken full advantage of any available sick days during my two years. He was absolutely flabbergasted when I admitted that I only had one sick day available to use — just ONE? — when he had literally weeks accumulated.

I’d had this idea that I should really start saving my sick days, just in case I need them. After all, using your last sick day is kind of like wearing your last pair of underwear before it’s laundry day.

Fast forward to this weekend: last night, I went to bed at a relatively reasonable time. Laid down, read a mindless Star Trek novel for a while, then turned off the light.

And laid there.

Awake.

I finally put a bottle of lotion in front of the minutes display on my alarm clock, so I wouldn’t be tempted to keep checking the time. I fell asleep for a while, around the time Aaron came to bed (sometime in the neighborhood of 4am), but I remember being awake and exhausted and uncomfortable at six-something.

By the time my alarm went off, I’d just managed to drift off into a dream-filled sleep. I turned off my alarm, got up (eventually), hobbled into the bathroom, and stared into the mirror for a while.

Am I going to work? I really should go. I have deadlines. But will I be able to concentrate? How much work will actually get done today? But I really shouldn’t use my last sick day. Again. But I feel like hell. I’m exhausted, and my back hurts from sleeping in some weird position, and my brain feels full of cotton.

And, as in all cases where I start arguing with myself, the Devil On My Shoulder was the victor. I went downstairs, fetched my iPhone, and emailed my boss, telling her that I didn’t feel well and was taking a sick day. And I went back upstairs and crawled back into bed.

But I didn’t sleep. Not well, anyway.
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