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A quarter a dozen, perhaps? Maybe they can be used to produce some kind of oil?

 

Snake oil maybe...

 

 

 

 

 

I know!  Could you pickle them in lye and sell them to the Norwegians?

 

Or that...

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Or feed them to a palindromedary

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I haven't posted much about this, but I have a medical issue. It's a congenital aortic valve insufficiency, which could -- well, will, with enough time -- lead to congestive heart failure. Surgery is the solution: a mechanical valve must be installed, which means an open thoracic procedure with a stopped heart and a heart-lung device hooked into the circulation, and if it all goes well it all means six months of sick leave and a lifelong treatment with Warfarin.

 

Luckily, it was caught before any symptoms developed, which means much better odds of survival. 

 

But all that is just a backdrop to today's little rant -- because of the risk of endocarditis, I have to have my mouth checked out for possible infections. I had that done today. It went reasonably well -- the dentist was cute, the nurse was competent and soothing, the level of professionalism was high, the bedside manner impeccable, and I managed not to bite anyone. No new cavities, but there is one cracked tooth that needs to have a root canal ... On Monday. Aargh.

 

I heartily dislike dentistry, or at least have it performed upon me. I will undergo the root canal, but I will be doped. And probably unhappy.

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I have had one root canal, and the procedure wasn't fun, but it was a rather individual reaction (psychological) that was the worst part of it.

 

I got paranoid.

 

I got nitrous oxide along with the heavy local anesthetic.  That first was enough to let a couple of internal demons loose enough so they could talk to me.

 

"You know," it said, "he says he's doing a root canal, but in reality he's extracting your entire central nervous system through that hole in your jaw."

 

"Horse ____," the rational part said.  "Not physically possible."

 

"How do you know?  Do you know the function of all those instruments?  You can feel the pressure he's exerting elsewhere along that nerve..."

 

This went on for pretty much the duration. That, along with my only other experience with general anesthesia (not quite as overtly paranoid but still unpleasant -- the hallucination ended with me sliding down into utter darkness in a narrow passageway, screaming all the way) cemented my decision to abstain from mind-altering substances other than alcohol: there are waaaay too many exceedingly disagreeable things in there just waiting to get out. 

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I've been really intoxicated on alcohol only a handful of times, and the results have ... varied.  I think this is an effect of choosing to do that only when I am in a good mood, or when the entire reason for the celebration is something I've done, which automatically means I'm in friendly and supportive company.  And, application of alcohol can be (has always been, in my case) slow enough that you can monitor your progress as you slip toward inebriation and abort that progress if it seems wise (and I've done that, too).

 

Anesthesia, of course, is always "numb-'em-up-fast-as-possible" so the control has been out of my hands.

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