tragedy or triumph

I cannot say that we have had any tragedy in our direct family, but if you watch the news on TV or read the newspaper it sure seems like bad news is all around us. Car accidents taking lives, armed robbery and murder, cancer victims, sometimes it seems like the we are immersed in a horrible society.

I can say that we have had many extremely stressful situations in our family, but when you are in the middle of them they sure seem to make us miserable. I think stress caused me to have heart problems a few years ago when we lived in San Antonio. I went to the doctor for a cough and chest pain as I have been paranoid about coughs ever since I had pneumonia when our daughter was born. The physician's assistant who was on call thought I was having a heart attack, after doing an EKG, so he rolled in the oxygen tank and immediately gave me nitroglycerin under my tongue. I told him I felt fine, but he insisted I go to the emergency room right away. He called my wife since he would not let me out the door without her, as he did not want me to drive. After months of tests, I finally found out that I had a heart aneurysm that is common among Japanese men who run. The only problem was that I am not Japanese; however, no one knows if I have had this from birth or it has been growing with age. I had my weekly check up this week, which was really a waste of $20 as the heart doctor did very little.

Also this week our daughter had surgery on her impacted teeth to help force them to come out straight. Her braces are going to help pull her teeth down into the right place over the next year or so. Sounds pretty nasty to me, but she had no problem with the anesthesia and is slowly recovering. This is another example of you read about people who die from going under, so you can get worried about such things. I think that only leaves our youngest son as the only one in the family that has not been put to sleep for surgery. All of the other kids have had their wisdom teeth removed, so they survived without any bad side affects. That reminds me of why my wife hates dentists as growing up in South Korea, the dentist she went to never used anesthesia. That must have been a lot of fun having cavities filled or drilling into teeth without your mouth being numb. It sounds so middle ages to me, but I guess I am a spoiled American!

It doesn't seem like much tragedy or triumph was shared in this post, but I certainly am thankful for these days of calmness in our family.

teeth - are they straight enough?

Time to take a digression back into the moment and talk about teeth. This was a big week in the life of our youngest son as he finally was fitted for orthodontia (or braces as it is more affectionately called). Our insurance covered a little under half of it, but still the sticker shock was a bit overwhelming. I remember the days when I heard people getting braces for $2000. Well those days are long gone for good. I have perfect teeth and I am often asked if I had braces when I was younger. Some of my genes may be bad, but the teeth genes are the best and strongest. My daughter is up next for this exciting event, but at least the dentist takes monthly payments to cover the cost. I have heard from upper class co-workers that the latest trend is to get braces for your kids even if they don't need it - kind of like a prestige thing. Now that is America at it's worse.

The other big news of the day is that I was invited to attend the a company wide videocast of our CEO talking about us making over $2 billion last year. Now that would cover a lot of braces! I was not anyone special, I was picked at random from the general population. There was fewer than 120 people present and most of them were executives, so the number of worker bees were definitely a minority. It would have been exciting to see gifts given to those in attendence like on the Oprah Show, but no such thing happened today.

Lastly, our oldest son rode home with me today and I found out that he has a job at Walgreens pharmacy as a photo technician. He enjoys himself after retiring from the restaurant business, which he did not enjoy. At least today all is well.