Tuesday Update

Tuesday evening again and I am all alone with my thoughts. I have had a very busy week and expect to be busy for the next couple of weeks. As Dick said, we have triple Friday celebrations. Last Friday we celebrated Dick's 75th birthday. We went to a buffet and of course I ate too much, but it was wonderful, maybe the best salad bar I have ever had.

Next Friday we will be in Irvine, celebrating Todd's White Coat Ceremony. We are still so very grateful that he was accepted into Irvine Medical School. He will do very well there, I am sure. I am going to try very hard to stay on this planet until he graduates and gets his M.D.

The following Friday we will be in Lake Tahoe for the big wedding. Friday we will be celebrating our 39th year anniversary. I am sure we will enjoy it immensely as we plan to go to Harvey's fish buffet for dinner. We used to go all the time whenever we were on our way to Nampa Idaho to visit my oldest sister. She died several years ago, so haven't been back since. It is a great place to go and we hope that a lot of our family will be able to join us, unless our son and his bride have something else planned for the night before their wedding. It will be kinda fun having their anniversary the day after ours.

After those three Fridays, I will probably come home and crash for at least a week.

Some of you may remember what a terrible time I had last year trying to get a bridge for my lower teeth. I wanted it to be like my upper teeth, a permanent bridge that was supported by implants. My wonderful periodontist planned to put a ten teeth bridge in, supported by five implants. He did the implants and it takes quite a while before they are properly snug in the bone, so while we waited, one of the implants got infected and he had to take it out. He put in another one right next to it, and it too got infected, so he had to pull it out (ugh, such horrible pain connected to both of them) that only left me with four implants, which he felt were not enough to support the ten permanent teeth bridge. Instead, he elected to have me do an implant supported denture, which he wanted my dentist to do. Unfortunately, to make a long story short, it was a disaster right from the start. It didn't fit, still doesn't, and I kept having to have him adjust them. Instead of adjusting the teeth, he tried to make them fit by adjusting the abutments on the implants by making them longer, which everytime I took them out, it caused the implant to get a bit loose because of the force put on the long abutment. One of the front implants got loose, so it had to be extracted. Now I am down to three implants. He had me go to a specialist today, a Maxillofacial Prosthodontist, who helped me immensely by adjusting the bite. He has some more work to be done on it, but instead of starting from scratch, which I was afraid he would do, he will be able to make this one I have work. I can't tell you how many times I just wanted to take it out and throw it away as far as I could. At least I won't have double expense. It has cost us a fortune already.

So, my friends, that is about it. Pretty much caught up to date. I am so grateful that I am doing better. If it weren't for my back and legs, I would be in great shape.

Our weather has been crazy the past few days so haven't done my pool exercises. There has been rain and even lightening about the time in the afternoon when we usually go in the pool, so won't do it as long as it is raining, even a little. It is supposed to be better tomorrow. It has been so muggy. High temperatures (1o4 today) but the dew point has been in the 60's and 70's. Just awful. I'll be glad when we can go back to those pool exercises. They really do help me.

Hope this finds all of you well and happy.

My love,

Darlene