I thought I should pop in here and post a quick update. The last month has been pretty busy with work, but I think I’ve started settling into a more comfortable routine. The real ordeal last month was a toothache that was getting worse and worse. I went into the dentist three times before he found what was wrong – underneath one of my old fillings was some decay that had gotten bad enough to cause the pain and headaches. He did a root canal, but two more visits later and I was still in remarkable pain. I was taking about 12 ibuprofen a day, combined with a slug of whiskey before bed to help me sleep – seriously bad news.
I finally ended up taking a day off of work to have the dentist take one last shot before I fired him and moved on to a specialist. Luckily on that day he found a completely different cavity on a different tooth, and after giving me another root canal on the other tooth the pain completely disappeared. For the first time in what seems like years I can drink a glass of cold liquid without having any pain. My ibuprofen count went back down to zero and things are getting back to normal. I still need to get crowns for the two teeth, and before that I have to let some temporary medicine sit inside the empty teeth to completely disinfect the teeth before sealing them up. That means chewing on only one side of my mouth, but I am getting used to it. Hopefully I’ll have the crowns in place before our trip in August.
Today after work I’ll join a farewell party for Mr. Watanabe in the human resources department. He was one of the first contacts I had with the company, and it’ll be sad to see him go. He is leaving Kawasaki and moving to Tokyo to work for another company – which is a rare career move in Japan. I hope he’ll be happier in Tokyo but we’ll miss him around here. He is a very good worker.
Kuniko has a party tomorrow night, and she’ll be working on Saturday, but we are planning to go to the Osaka Ritz Carlton on Monday night to see one of her ex-coworkers singing jazz in their bar. I’m hoping they sound something like Sausalito from “Lost in Translation”.
