2021 in Review Part III: Same Old: Same. Old.

As time ticks down, it seemed a good opportunity to write about time ticking down. As the tag line for that earlier George Lucas saga hypothetically asked:



Still here, is the most important thing.  Getting to this number means I've achieved numerological parity with my favorite team. For the Mets began play in '62, and played it historically badly.  We'll get to their more present pursuits probably tomorrow.  Still, I've made it into the "ten" of the proverbial "threescore and ten" that was considered standard for our make and model.

I've had my annual general checkup, and my decennial view from Down Under, and both reported me to be well.  Eleanor had her five year post-cataract visit to the opthamologist, which reported all was okay with her, and it prompted me to make my own appointment with them to see how many years I might have before that. Answer: at least a few. I'm having the most trouble with up-close reading these days, and rarely wear glasses for anything other than driving because the restriction's on my license.

Weight and routine are about the same. I still try to make it in twice a week for a very intense more-or-less hour of high intensity training, and I've kept up with the occasional benchmarks and other challenges they throw at us.  The dog also makes sure I'm out walking on a daily basis, with longer ones on Sundays with other now and former furparents.  Eleanor has more limits because of her more prolonged pains, but she's adapted to them and still keeps pretty active, inside the house if not outside it.

One area I know I lost weight in, though, was in my mouf, for 2021 brought down another tooth.

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It was supposed to be a routine cleaning back in March, and I wasn't in any pain. But it was x-ray time, and they uncovered a party in my mouth that needed to be shut down, going on under a crown that I'd had for years and my dentist had managed to reattach a year the previous summer after it came off (fortunately without me swallowing it). A closer inspection showed there was no hope of fixing the remaining stubby underneath, and the only solution was for it to come out....

which it did, a few weeks later. It's just beyond the range of being visible, but we talked about whether an implant would be an option. Since it really wasn't financially, I checked with the UB Dental School to see if they could do anything. They brought me in for an initial consult, sent me back to Ron for full x-rays and a full-mouth wax impression, and I then brought them back to UB for a more thorough sit-down. It confirmed that spot would not be right for an implant, but as long as the (additional) hole in my head wasn't causing me pain or inconvenience, I was best off leaving it alone.  Which I did, until about a month later I started feeling pain there again.  Another visit scheduled, and the culprit was identfied....

I was teething. Specifically, a bit of bone under the gum line wasn't completely happy with the new arrangements and was fighting its way out. It took about 30 seconds of drilling to fix it.  That's 30 seconds longer than how my latest complaint got fixed: a month or so after my last cleaning got me a clean bill of dental health, I started feeling a weird but duller pain in that same back corner, but it went away before I could even do anything about it.  Ultimately, all of these horrible teeth are likely to go, but it's good to have the problem off my plate (or palate, I suppose) for the time being.

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Other than that, it's just the usual aches and pains of being a year older.  Nothing stopping me from working or working out, and I don't have any specialists on the team yet as Eleanor does. Just three more years to the joys of Medicare.