Tag: health

This morning I had a dental appointment. The first of two to get a crown fitted to a molar with some issues. My dentist noted this at my last regular cleaning a few weeks ago, and recommended I get the crown fitted soon to avoid more major work on the tooth in the future.

After injecting some anaesthetic, the dentist took a cool 3D scan of my teeth with a new gadget that I haven’t seen before. Being an imaging professional, with experience in 3D reconstruction, this was actually fascinating. The scanner had a probe head that the dentist moved around the teeth from all angles, and I could see it building up the 3D model in real time on the display screen. It also had colour capture, so the model was realistically coloured, with my gums and teeth showing very realistically.

Then once my mouth was numb, he started grinding down the molar, shaping to fit into the concavity in the bottom of the new crown. Then he did another scan, to get the shape of the tooth stump for moulding the inside of the crown. Then he fitted a temporary plastic cap to protect the stump for the next two weeks, until my next appointment, when the newly produced custom crown will be fitted. The whole process took a bit under an hour.

I went to pick up Scully from my wife’s work, and we walked home. I wanted to wait until the anaesthetic wore off before I ate lunch, to avoid accidentally biting the inside of my cheek while chewing. But it was still keeping my mouth numb by 1pm!

Eventually I walked with Scully up to the fish & chip shop. I ordered a chicken burger. Usually I’d get chips, but today I felt like potato scallops, so I got some of those instead.

As the anaesthetic wore off, my tooth started to ache a bit. Not too bad, but definitely noticeable. Hopefully that will wear off over the next day or so.

This afternoon I worked on a science class on basic astronomy, for my online science student’s next class tomorrow. It’s all about the solar system, Earth’s orbit, the moon, seasons, that sort of thing.

Today I wrote my class plan for the next week of critical thinking. The topic is “Stranded on a Desert Island”. I’ll be asking the kids questions about survival and rescue, both alone, and also as part of a group of strangers. One question will be asking them if a waterproof bag washes up with them with one book and piece of gear in it (other than a radio or anything else that would mean easy rescue), what book and gear would they choose.

While thinking about this, I casually browsed some survival books on the Internet, and I ran across this interesting looking one: The Book: The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding a Civilization.

When I’d finished, I had to dash up to the dentist, for my regular dental hygiene and check-up appointment. And when I got there, guess what book was on the waiting room table:

The very book I’d been looking at online less than an hour before! So of course I had a good flip through it while waiting for my appointment. It does look very interesting, although not nearly as practical a survival guide as some others. It’s a lot more eclectic and fun than a useful guide.

The hygienist gave me a clean bill of health after cleaning my teeth, but the dentist took x-rays and suggested some work to fix an old filling that is starting to deteriorate, before it causes problems. I need to schedule that work in some time in the next few weeks.

After the appointment I went to my wife’s work and picked up Scully to bring her home for the afternoon. I did some comic writing, and then an online class this evening before relaxing for the night.

Last night I got a much better sleep, finally, after my Europe trip. I woke up a couple of times, but instead of lying there unable to sleep, I fell back to sleep. And I was still snoozing when my wife woke me up just 20 minutes before my first ethics class of the day at 08:00!

I had to quickly gulp down a small serve of muesli for breakfast and get set up for the class. I had two in a row, after which I finished the second half of my breakfast at 10:00. Then two more classes.

After those I walked Scully up to my wife’s work, and did a 5k run to get home. I varied my route slightly from last Monday when I did the same thing, because while running a deliberately longer way around a building I encountered stairs, and I really don’t want to run down stairs, so I made sure to avoid that this week. It meant doing a couple of laps of the park near my place before finishing to get the distance up to 5k, but that was okay.

Tonight I finished the last two Monday evening classes for several weeks. I am moving them, one to Sunday and one to Tuesday, because from next week I will be tutoring the university image processing course at UTS again. The timeslot changes every year and this year they’ve scheduled it for 6-9pm on Mondays. So I’ll need to drop Scully at my wife’s work and head into the city on the train, and have a quick dinner in there somewhere before the lecture starts.

It’s taking forever to shake off this jetlag from my Europe trip. Last night I went to bed about 10pm. I slept and later woke up and felt like it must be around 6am. I thought I’d just lie in until the alarm went off for my wife to get ready for work. But I tossed and turned for about two hours, unable to go back to sleep, and no alarm. So I risked a glance at the clock (normally I avoid looking at the clock during the night when trying to fall asleep again)… and it read 3:45. And I was now wide awake.

I got up and went to the living room and read a book for about an hour, to see if that would make me feel sleepy. Then went back to bed and tried to fall asleep, without much luck. At 6am I gave up and just got up and had breakfast and started my day.

For some reason this was worse than the night before, when I slept longer. I felt after that I’d have a good chance of sleeping through the night and essentially being over the jetlag. But now it feels almost like I’m back at square one. I suspect it might have been caused by the nap in had in the morning yesterday.

So today I just toughed it out, staying up and active, despite hitting a tiredness cliff in the early afternoon. Hopefully I’ll sleep longer tonight. It’s weird. I can adjust to jetlag quickly when going somewhere – I had essentially no problems at all in Europe after arriving there. But coming home is always much tougher.

Anyway, I didn’t do much today beyond teaching my Outschool ethics classes, and making a new Darths & Droids strip. So not much else to say.

I’m still suffering from the jet lag issue of waking up way too early and not being able to go back to sleep. I was awake from about 5am this morning and even though very tired I just couldn’t nod off again. I finally got up at 06:00 and had my breakfast.

But then around 08:00 when my wife left for work, I felt really tired and decided to go back to bed and see if I could sleep some more. I ended up getting up again after 11:00, although I felt like I was mostly dropping in and out of a light doze rather than getting a deep sleep. But it seemed to help since I didn’t feel as awfully tried this afternoon as yesterday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a better sleep tonight and not wake up so early again.

Still, I took it easy today. I had to go pick up Scully from my wife’s work at lunch time, and we walked home together slowly. I watched some videos and cooked some vegetable soup for dinner, and had three ethics classes in the evening. I had a kid show off Labubus during one of the classes—I’d only learnt what they are two days ago!

I went to bed last night about 9:30 to try and sleep through the night to adjust back into this time zone. I was tired enough to fall asleep quickly but around 04:30 I woke up and started feeling awake, finding it difficult to get back to sleep. After tossing and turning for a bit, I got up around 05:30. I had some breakfast and waited for the sun to come up.

Once my wife got up she planned to go to an exercise class at the gym from 09:30. I tool this as an opportunity and encouragement to get back into my running, so I set out for a 5k run at the same time. Not having done one for three weeks I was a bit rusty and took it easy, but managed to complete the distance in a time better than I expected. I did careful stretching afterwards to avoid stiff muscles, but my leg muscles are really a bit sore now. I’ll rest up tomorrow and maybe do another run on Sunday.

We didn’t do very much today. The highlights were:

• Going grocery shopping to restock perishable food supplies. A lot of fruit and vegetables and dairy stuff.
• Driving out to pick up Scully from our friends’ place. We went at lunch time as they were working from home, so we had something to eat and told them about our trip. Scully was of course super excited to see us again.
• Transferring photos from the trip off my phone onto the computer. I tool over 1100 photos on my phone. Plus another 500 or so on my dSLR, which I haven’t transferred yet.
• Taking Scully for an evening walk.
• Cooking fried rice for dinner. I said to my wife, our first night back home, what do you want me to cook? And she picked the most time-consuming and complex thing that I regularly make. There’s a lot of vegetable chopping and other prep work involved, including cooking the rice and a fried egg separately before getting the wok out.

Oh, we wondered if when we got home new neighbours would have moved into the apartment next door, which sold just before we left. But nobody’s in there yet. Though today we did see some people go in and remove the wooden shutters from the windows. Perhaps the new owners prefer some other form of window shading such as curtains or blinds.

We’re off to bed a bit early again tonight as we’ve been tired all day, but staying awake to force ourselves into the right time zone.

After yesterday’s falling accident, I had bandages on the heels of my hands and my knees overnight. They’re a bit sore, but beginning to heal up. I could do most things, but kitchen work was tough without getting my bandages wet.

I did six ethics classes today, finishing off the “Let’s Design a Government” theme. Yesterday and today I had to tell all my students that I’ll be taking three weeks off for my Europe trip and I wont see them until mid-July. I will begin the next topic tomorrow and run it until Friday, then interrupt for my trip and resume on Sunday after I get back in three weeks. So the next topic, “Old-Fashioned”, will be split across the holiday.

Today I also packed up some more Magic: the Gathering cards which I sold to someone online and then shipped them off via the post office. It was about 2 kilograms of cards, making a significant dent in the remaining collection I have left.

Because of my bandaged hands I couldn’t make and knead pizza dough for our usual Monday night pizza. My wife has volunteered to make the dough tomorrow instead. We’re tapering down our perishable food supplies so we don’t have anything perishable left by Saturday when we fly out. So we have specific requirements to use up the remaining vegetables and dairy products (and fruits) over the next few days.

Tomorrow I’ll also get started organising things to pack for the trip. I need to print out our itinerary, train tickets, and the agenda for my Photography Standards meeting in Berlin.

This morning I was doing my 5k run. I reached the 3.8 km mark (according to Strava), right at the end of a long downhill stretch, so I was going pretty fast, when my foot caught an uneven concrete paving block edge. I took a couple of flailing steps and then realised I couldn’t stay on my feet. I fell headlong onto the concrete, but managed to roll myself onto the adjacent grass after initial contact.

It hurt a lot. Probably the most painful thing since I accidentally sliced my hand open five years ago. I was still lying on the grass assessing my status when a couple came up, a bit older than me, to check and make sure if I was okay or not. I was in a quiet residential street and they were the only other people around.

I managed to pull myself to my feet and determine that there were no broken bones, nor any sprains. In fact I felt fairly okay, except for painful and bleeding grazes on both knees and the heels of both hands. The couple asked how near I lived, and I told them it was a walk up the hill and past the railway station. They were going that way and said they’d walk with me. I had to reassure them a couple of times first that I was capable of walking. They were very kind and concerned.

At the station I used a drinking water station to rinse off some of the blood before proceeding home. During the walk I discovered that this couple live in the old converted church that I always admire when I go past it. It’s a small old Anglican church, in the middle of a street of houses, and it’s been converted into a residence. They said they bought the property some time ago and did the renovation work necessary to turn it into a home. Quite a coincidence that these would be the people who stopped to help me.

Once home, my wife helped me as I showered in hot water and with lots of soap to wash the wounds. Then I applied iodine antiseptic to them and bandaged them all up. The bleeding had almost stopped and the grazes don’t seem too bad. And I’m up to date with tetanus shots, so that’s not a worry.

Now, in the evening, things seem mostly fine. The heels of my hands are a little tender and bruised, and the right knee too. My left knee and hand are least affected, because as I fell I tried to head towards the grass on the right hand side, so most of the impact (on the concrete) was on my right knee and hand. It’ll be a few days for the grazes and bruises to heal up, but I don’t expect any other issues. I’m very happy I didn’t break a bone less than a week before flying to Europe.

During the afternoon I worked on more Darths & Droids comics. I now have made enough to cover the entire time I’ll be away in Europe, so there won’t be any pause in regular updates. And then late in the afternoon I had ethics classes. I had something to tell my students during the introductions while waiting for everyone to login to Zoom: I showed them the bandages on my hands and explained what had happened. It’s actually good to have something to talk about, as small-talk with the kids can be tricky sometimes.

And now it’s time to relax and watch some TV before bed.

I’ve been monitoring a slightly sore nose for a few days and last night I decided it was sore enough that it’s probably infected. So I wanted to see a doctor and hopefully get some antibiotics – or reassurance that it’s not infected.

But it’s Easter weekend, and my GP isn’t open again until Tuesday. There’s a walk-in medical centre up the road, and when I checked during a wakeful period during the night I saw they opened at 8:00. They don’t take appointments, you just show up and wait for the next doctor to be available. So I decided to get up at 7:00, have a quick breakfast, and walk up to wait at the door before they opened, to ensure I wouldn’t have to wait long to see a doctor.

I got there about 7:30 and was the only one waiting until about ten minutes to go, when a queue began forming behind me. The woman behind me was fiddling with her phone, and expressing some frustration, muttering something like, “They must only activate the app when it opens.” I asked her, “Do you need an app to get an appointment?” She answered no, you can go to the receptionist, but they try to direct you to download the app.

I really hate this sort of thing. No way I want to download and install an app on my phone just to access a service like this, and doubly so for a place that I’m not a regular customer. I figured if the receptionist tells me to install an app just to get an appointment, I’ll just refuse and ask to have one without it.

Eventually the door opened and we went in. I saw next to the reception desk were huge billboards on either side, with a QR code to download the booking app, but I ignored these. I was first in the queue, so approached the receptionist first, and asked to see a doctor. She didn’t mention the app, but simply asked my date of birth and name and found my record very quickly (I’d been here once before for a vaccination), and booked me in. It only took 30 seconds at most. But by the time she’d done this, she said that I was seventh in the queue, and that being Easter Saturday there was only one doctor on duty! So… in the time it took me to walk from the door to the reception desk and get the receptionist to enter me into the waiting list, six other patients behind me had used the app to claim places in the queue ahead of me! 😡

Fortunately, a couple of other doctors apparently arrived, and they churned through the patients very quickly, so I was seeing one just before 8:30. He confirmed my nose was infected and prescribed some oral antibiotics and a topical ointment. I left with the prescription (at zero cost, thanks to Australia’s Medicare system). Next step was to find a pharmacy where I could buy the medicines. I searched online and found on down the street that said it opened at 8:30, so I walked down there, only to find a sign stuck to the window saying that it opened at 9:30 on Easter Saturday!

I walked back up the street, checking the windows of all the pharmacies—there are four of them within a few blocks. They all had later opening hours for the holiday, but I found one that opened at 9:00. By now my wife had appeared with Scully, having walked up to get some coffee. So we sat together at a cafe for half an hour until the pharmacy opened.

Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and when I arrived at about 5 minutes past 9, there was a queue of about 8 people ahead of me with prescriptions to be filled. So that took some time, and I didn’t get home until almost 10:00. I had some antibiotic tablets and applied the ointment, and then changed to go for a 5k run.

After that and post-run stretching exercises I had a shower and it was almost time to go to the supermarket to pick up my online pick-up order. I couldn’t do this on Friday as usual because it was Good Friday and the supermarkets were all closed. And the supermarket was very busy, because tomorrow it’s closed as well for Easter Sunday and so a lot of people need to cram their shopping into Saturday on this weekend.

After all that I finally did some comics stuff in the afternoon. I helped my wife cook a lentil mushroom loaf which we’ll be taking to lunch at her mother’s place tomorrow, as a vegetarian alternative to the roast lamb. And for dinner I made enchiladas, with spinach as we had some leftover fresh spinach that needed to be used up.