For the past three days a dentist's visit has distracted me from writing about the journey to Leipzig, and also sown chaos into my schedule of journalistic expeditions and other outings.
I went into it quite innocently. Then came out, after a surgery, with a long list of rules for the next 24 hours/2 weeks, 4 prescriptions (1 homeopathic), and a face that was OK at first and then by evening began to swell.
A hiring manager phoned me on Wednesday. Wallowing in an audiobook and self-pity for my chipmunk face, I'd been hoping that the practicalities of life would postpone to next week and was not very phone-ready. But in the end it hopefully wasn't too awkward.— I pleaded for a postponement of an interview to next week.
On Wednesday evening, one of my stitches unravelled and fell out.
Reluctantly, after seeking advice from the internet, I went to the dentist's office at noon the next day, knowing I was being a pain in the neck because it was the last day before a 4-day weekend.
But after waiting longer than usual, and looking over journalistic notes while I waited, the surgeon saw me.
She was surprisingly pleased with the healing— as I told the family afterward, my mouth looked a bit like Hieronymus Bosch to me, but clearly the landscape looked quite tidy to her — and my care of the stitches. She and her assistant gave things a clean and rinse, but didn't need to put a stitch back in.
As mentioned, my face has been chipmunky. Although the walk and the wait in the reception had done me some good, the first thing the surgeon advised when I said 'Ich sehe wie ein Eichhörnchen aus' was 'Kühlen, kühlen, kühlen!' ('Chill.') (We have four cold compresses in the freezer, and I'd already been using them intermittently. So that advice was easy to follow.)
Either way, I returned home quite cheerful. It's also good that I was able to go into Easter with peace of mind.
Before the visit, I had been thinking of the early cosmetic surgery during World War I that I'd researched a while ago. Maybe the weirdest thing was how soft and inflamed the skin inside my mouth felt, as if it were not skin at all but just flesh, and how it felt like I had a cotton wad between my cheek and my gums. But I have the safety net of modern antibiotics.
Intermittently I have been quite cranky. Part of the reason is also the 2-week prohibition on sports, so in fact the somewhat anxious walk to the dentist's to see about the stitch was liberating and fun because I was so happy to be outdoors again.
But I'm also cranky because of the bland food I've been having because it's mushy enough to eat without damaging my stitches. I've had to do a lot more cooking and food preparation than usual, and sometimes it wasn't clear if I was getting enough calories.
Oats steeped in yoghurt and milk, yoghurt with mashed banana, mashed banana on its own... porridge... soup made from bouillon powder with a crushed salty cracker... soup made from bouillon powder with guar gum powder I thought I'd never be able to use... fried eggs... boiled eggs.. and finally, yesterday, chocolate pudding. — (An electronic information form that I was given to read before the surgery had advised against milk or milk products for I think 48 hours, which cast me into some despair. Afterward I found a paper online that suggested that this is a fairly Germany-specific, scientifically unfounded canard that might be left over from times when tuberculosis was a big risk; this may explain why the dentists and my take-home guideline sheet didn't mention it.) — Cookies dunked in tea. Lentils and rice I didn't cook long enough, so the rice may have compromised the stitch that fell out. The chicken soup with salty crackers was my favourite meal until today, except for the lingering aftertaste of monosodium glutamate.
Then, today, we had a lunch of boiled potatoes (with butter and nutmeg and pepper) and spinach, with applesauce and optionally fried eggs. And I truly enjoyed that.
The question was also, what to do during the 12 hours per day where I can't do much of anything? On Wednesday I researched historical train accidents because of a story I'd wanted to cover, but it felt ghoulish sifting through the ashes of someone else's misery and obviously the activity wasn't a cheer-upper. Reading magazines and newspapers was more purposeful, and I finished a year-old copy of Exberliner.
My new morning and evening routines that bookend my days include swallowing an amoxicillin tablet of such impressive dimensions that, in pill terms, 'watermelon' comes to mind. I was going to skip the ibuprofen after the first dose because I wasn't in pain. But then the surgeon told me that it was good to take it twice per day just because it would also reduce the swelling, and I was sold. Then there's an antiseptic I need to apply to the stitches 3x per day.
Either way, of course I'm very grateful for the amoxicillin, because of the aforementioned recency of widespread availability of antibiotics in human history. But I'm not sad to see that half the prescription is already finished.
On April 2nd I'll have a check-up.
***
This afternoon I tried to prepare for journalistically interesting events in April and May.
It turns out that in late April there will be a very formal event for Immanuel Kant's 300th birthday. (Which has a few awkward geopolitical connotations: he lived in Kaliningrad, but we're not on speaking terms with Russia's government...) I invited myself there, also because I felt my father urging me to take the chance.
But when I received the confirmation email that I may go, I freaked out:
I have not read more than two pages of Kant's works in my life, as far as I remember.
I'd never finish the Critique of Pure Reason in time; reading the timeliest secondary literature by then seems hopeless too.
So I imagined myself sitting at the fancy venue, in my usual plebeian rags, asking my seat neighbour to explain everything to me with puppets and song, like a dumbed-down Sesame Street episode ... While a Kant expert sits at home sulking into their scholarly publications, because they weren't able to secure their rightful seat before the venue hit capacity.
Fortunately we have Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy in the family library.
Russell won't posthumously help me figure out what to wear to the event, admittedly, but the assistance with Kant's thoughts is already plenty.
[Kant's] General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) [...] sets forth a possible origin of the solar system. [...] In parts it is purely fanciful, for instance in the doctrine that all planets are inhabited, and that the most distant planets have the best inhabitants—a view to be praised for its terrestrial modesty, but not supported by any scientific grounds.
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