Yesterday my front tooth implant was uncovered and a healing abutment placed, so in about a month I will have a permanent tooth there. WOO HOO!

 

It has been a long time coming  

 

I started the process last April.  I’ve been traveling to Seattle intermittently (every few months) to get the work done at the U of W Dental School of Oral and Maxilofacial Surgery Center. I saved 40% by allowing students to do the work; they were overseen by persnickety surgeons who have done the procedures thousands of times.  It’s a teaching school, so they use state of the art procedures and materials.

 

During the process, I’ve had three different oral surgeons, two men and one woman.

 

The second one went to bat for me when the bill came back at waaaay more than the quote I was given (I pitched a documented bitch and the amount was reduced sufficiently to satisfy me) so I’m very grateful for his help.

 

The oral surgeon yesterday (the woman) was terrific, too.  I was in and out of there in a half hour.  (The commute to Seattle from Tacoma took 90 minutes up during the morning rush hour commute and about 40 minutes back starting at about 12:30 p.m.)

 

Why Did It Take So Long?

 

The process has taken a year because the oral surgeon first had to bolster my bone structure before he could place the implant.  When he did that, there was a healing process of (if I recall correctly) two to three months. Then the implant was placed in mid-September, so another three to four month healing period was required, which extended to six months because I appeared to have fallen off their schedule.  I tried calling several times, as did my dentist, but we weren’t getting any return calls.

 

When they finally did call back, they were very apologetic and scheduled me in within ten days.

 

In the interim, my dentist fixed another front tooth, which sported an unsightly damaged veneer, and another tooth farther back in my mouth that was threatening to break apart.  She bolstered it but says it needs a crown this year at some point.  That will be another $800 but it will cover the “dark/filled/redeemed” tooth  and give me an even better appearance, so I plan to have that done, too.

 

CROWN MOULD COMING UP

 

I texted my dentist, Shawna (also at the UW School of Dentistry but in a different location than the oral and maxilofacial setting), letting her know the excavating procedure was completed and a healing abutment placed so she could put me on her calendar in a little over two weeks to have the crown measurements taken and the mould for the crown and final abutment taken.

 

FINAL STEP

 

Ten days to two weeks after that, I will drive up one last time to have the crown placed, at which time I will have my former, tooth-filled smile back.  I will probably schedule the crown for my dicey tooth at that time as long as my writing income continues to be sufficient to get that off my to-do list. After that, my mouth should be in pretty darned good shape.

 

MY REMAINING PET RATS ARE SHORT-TIMERS

 

My remaining five pet rats will probably be down to two within the next month. They are grey, very old for rats, and developing aging issues that no vet can cure.  Every morning I expect to wake up to find one or more of them gone.  They’re still eating and chewing when they’re awake, but they sleep a lot more these days, and aren’t very active at all when they are awake.  Old age has set in big time with them.

 

When they’re gone, no more rats. I will be able to take the huge ferret cage out of my den and clear out all the maze boxes I’ve constructed for them (I swap them out every seven to ten days) and reclaim this room, which will look HUGE after the cage and rat paraphernalia are removed. I’m glad I was able to give them their 2 plus years of life; had I not taken them in, they would have become snake food long ago.

 

In Other News

 

Months ago, when I was invited to speak for up to three minutes during the upcoming Celestis Enterprise Flight Memorial Service, I chose something from my book DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal: A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best to read. It was the letter I wrote to him just before he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 1991.

 

Well, when I recently discovered that I wouldn’t be flown in to participate (they reallocated the funds they were going to use to fly me in and put me up at the flight hotel after I declined the first time), they said that although they love the three-minute video I recorded, I needed to send one that was just two minutes long because there were now so many participants on the Enterprise flight that they had to limit tribute comments to two minutes or less.

 

The request threw me for a loop.  At first, I didn’t think I could possibly truncate that letter by one third without gutting the hell out of its trajectory and just turn it into a bullet list of attaboys.  So, I was pissed off for quite a while.

 

After I cooled off (it took several hours!), I looked at the letter again and realized that if I took out the “story” element in it (about why meeting De the first time seemed so fraught with peril, and the trajectory our friendship took after that), I could bring it in in two minutes (and two seconds, as it turned out). So, I rerecorded it and watched it several times.

 

It’s adequate.  I was forced to remove all the personal stuff, which is what made the letter so much more personal and powerful to De when he read it, I’m sure. But it does communicate the essence of what I respected and loved most about De, and the high regard in which I held him.  So, it works.

 

But because so much more of our story happened after his star ceremony (including when I became his personal assistant and caregiver) I felt that the entire letter said more (in its time) that was borne out in spades as time went on after that.

 

So, I’m mourning the fact that the whole story isn’t alluded to in the truncated version. That’s what’s eating at me.

 

But the essence is still there, in spades, in what I was able to leave in.  So I’m satisfied.

 

I just hope that what people hear from me during the memorial service will inspire them to go to De’s participant page at Celestis.com to find out more.  Because, as you all know, there is SO MUCH MORE that could be said. (Eight more books worth, to be exact!)  And there is a 5+-minute additional video on his participant page at Celestis, so more of my memories are recorded for all time for future generations of Kelley fans who want to know what he was like “up close and personal.”

 

Client Testimonial

 

Finally, this week I received a short but very powerful response to a sales page that I wrote for one of my regular clients. I can’t divulge his name, as I am operating under an NDA for him, but here’s what he wrote about my most recent sales page:

 

“OMG, this is so creative, I love it!”

He always likes what I write for him, but he finally put it into a soundbyte that I can trumpet and put quotation marks around.  A man of few words, this pretty much says it all.

 

I love what I do, and who I do it for.  Including the books I’ve written.

 

I do it all for y’all.