Dentist, larynx.

We took Edda to the dentist yesterday and she spilled out of the kid-sized chair. This was a reschedule to last week’s appointment because I need Jeremy at the appt and he was traveling. As Edda has gotten older, she’s less able to clear her mouth of food and big chunks can stay in her mouth for a long time, leading to more cleaning issues for all of us. And oddly, she’s gotten strangely stronger and fights the dental cleaning more and tends to gag now much more than years ago. At least this time, she didn’t throw up. But it seems that the two teeth she pulled out last year are going to stay in her head as long as she doesn’t repull them out again.

I have long talks with Alice about what is suffering. (She’s in a chemo clinical trial.) and sometimes in the middle of a walk, she will turn to me and tell me – but I’m suffering now! And then I say something like, but there are so many good things – perhaps worth the suffering? Some days she gives me a withering look and telepathically I can feel her say to me – you have no idea. Other days she smiles and nods her head and agrees with me. And then it occurred to me that maybe Edda is suffering everyday. I’m not sure. I’ve always comforted myself thinking that she isn’t suffering, but these days, I’m not sure. Sometimes I cry about this.

Jeremy was on NPR – here. There is a thinness in his voice that he’s been having for a few years now that you can hear in the clip. Sometimes when we are having an intense discussion, I feel like he’s yelling at me because in order to talk with conviction, he has to force his voice more to get more intonation and the forcing of the voice adds a feeling of “yelling”. (I know this is a low bar for yelling, but we don’t yell in our relationship, so this is what I work with.) When he added a symptom of a slight cough a few months ago, I did go a little crazy and thought he was going to die on me (which I readily acknowledged was crazy-talk and told him it was a psychological thing because one neighbor has lung cancer and another neighbor is getting his immune system obliterated right now because of leukemia – everyone with young kids) and annoyed him a lot to get it checked out. Anyways, he’s not dying of cancer, he probably has laryngopharyngeal reflux – he larynx is really inflamed. He might have to give up coffee which pained him especially yesterday (he had a hard day yesterday). He loves coffee (I don’t understand this world-wide coffee love) – a big part of our falling-in-love story centers around him making a hand-ground cup for me everyday in 1995 (when we didn’t yet understand pumpkin spice latte) and me pretending to like it. I would like the richness of his voice to come back.

One thought on “Dentist, larynx.”

  1. You know I often wonder if Edda is suffering as well. I know her struggles are real but because she can’t tell us what she’s feeling it has gone through my head at times when she’s had a cold or when she knocked out her teeth. I am really glad you made Jeremy go to the doctor it’s better to be safe than sorry right?

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