TroubleMaker

Remember back in 2007, when we had my wife’s great aunt and her friend over from Romania for a visit? We couldn’t get rid of them fast enough because of the fighting between them.

So, in a moment of weakness, we decided to invite TroubleMaker (TM) back alone for a visit.

She arrived here after not having slept for 36 hours (combined travel and pre-travel insomniac excitement time). Nausea prevented her from eating well for the first day. While throwing up into the toilet during day 2, her lower denture fell in and then she accidentally flushed it.

“Can you get it back?” she asked.

I pointed to our septic tank. “See those green plastic covers in the ground over there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s where it is now.”

We took her to a denturist nearby. $1600 later and she now has 2 new full dentures (upper and lower). The previous lower denture cost  50 Euros (which we explained to the denturist as he looked at her old upper denture in disbelief).

The first three or four days with the new dentures was new-found torture for The Girl and me as the usual denture sores developed and TM was still not able to eat properly.

After a denture adjustment or two, TM was able to eat decently again. More importantly, she was able to take her “nerve” pill and keep it down. That wonder pill, the “nerve” pill, has almost transformed her into a normal woman. Almost…but definitely enough for us to enjoy life again.

She’s here until the end of July.

I hope to also be.

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments |

I’m only going to partially play by the rules though — I won’t tag anyone else at the end of this.

1. Adrian is my brother, my only sibling whom I see maybe every 4 months or so. He is my brother, 7 years younger, whom I yelled at, oppressed, and took advantage of in ways that only he remembers best. Yet with all the good he’s brought into my life, I can’t imagine growing up without him.
2. Naegele’s Rule has no application within my life for the foreseeable future. The Girl and I have no plans for human children of our own.
3. Teeth are obviously a huge part of my life. Shortly after I started practicing, however, I almost quit the profession. I had a difficult time dealing with the bullshit I saw happening to patients in too many of the offices that referred to me. I stuck it out though, created stringent policies to deter referrals from unethical dentists, and am much happier now.
4. Hodoscopes trace the paths of charged particles. I believe that life is one giant hodoscope and that all of us are particles within its field. Life is about energy on many levels. How we manipulate this energy is how we define our living.
5. Orchitis is basically…uncomfortable for a guy. I’m sure that every man can recall every single time he’s had a traumatic impact to his nuts. Any guy that says otherwise is either lying about remembering or lying about being a guy. My worst memory of this kind of thing is when I decided to be an idiot gymnast and I attempted to walk along some monkey bars. My feet slipped of course. My balls stopped my fall before my wildly flailing hands could.
6. Nymphicus Hollandicus was Tweety, the first bird The Girl and I ever owned. He loved her, but hated me because I was the one who clipped his nails and wings. He grew up to be a very spoilt bird who loudly demanded more incessesant attention than we could share. He now lives with the manager at a pet store that we frequent. He’s very happy there since he’s the only bird in the house and he gets to accompany his new owner on car trips and horseback rides.
7. Ygdrasil — the Norse mythologic Ash tree — reminds me of a girl I once knew. The tree’s roots and branches hold Earth, Heaven, and Hell together. Jannike, my favorite Norwegian, broke that all apart for me. The stars were strangely aligned when I met her. The fragmentation that she brought into my world prepared me for the rest of my life.

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments |

My office manager (woman on the left) has worked with me for the last 8.5 years. We’ve worked together in different offices and have had our differences — some of them quite major. Like AssistantGirl (the one in black), she was a dental “refugee” and had escaped a crappy work environment run by an ego-maniacal dentist where the bottom line was the single most important priority.

Through the last few years we’ve taught each other much about the practice of dentistry, the art of patient interaction, and tolerance. She has helped me to build 2 practices over those 8 years.

If you believe that there’s no such thing as a “coincidence” and that all events occur for a reason, you would have proof if you were to delve into the history between us.

It’s been a rough road but it has been a straight road.

I wish OfficeMom and her husband all the best with her growing family, her move away from the area, and her future endeavors. I know that our paths will intersect often in life and the black magic of facebook will facilitate that.

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments |

My brother and sister-in-law had us over for dinner a few weeks ago and served us an absolutely delicious meal. Kelly, my sister-in-law is a registered dietician and knows that I’m trying to watch my saturated fat intake. Even with minimal sodium and fat in the dishes that we had, we couldn’t believe how exotic and tasty they were.

That’s when she told us that the recipes were all from Rose Reisman’s book, The Complete Light Kitchen. We were so impressed that we bought a copy for ourselves and over the last week The Girl has actually been cooking. She’s discovered the joy of cooking. She’s still discovering how not to use every utensil and dish in the cupboards during the preparation of food.

I’m sitting at work having leftovers of Swordfish with mango salsa. Yummy.

We cooked this last night. The recipe called for either barbecuing the swordfish, or baking it in the oven. We thought the barbecue was a good idea. I haven’t sparked it up for the year as yet, so this would have been a good occasion.

This is how it looked as I walked out onto the deck towards it:

And this is what I found inside it:

Note the string over the burner:

For some reason, seeing all of this gave me a bad case of the HeeBeeJeeBees, so I shut the lid, ran back inside, and told her that we’re baking the swordfish. Which we did. The BBQ will stay that way until the weather gets a little warmer and I can arm myself with a garden hose.

This is how the dish looked:

And this how we ended up after a delicious dinner:

Although, to tell you the truth, Ameloblast is in that position for most of the day (especially since he’s been retired from blogging).

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 13 comments |

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 12 comments |

In this laboratory¹ you will apply the techniques of dilution and measurement of concentrations to investigate a physiological parameter: the hemolymph (or blood) volume of an insect. A parameter is a quantifiable variable of a system you wish to study. Determining values for a parameter such as hemolymph volume allows you to measure the effect of a treatment in an experiment, or to calculate other things. For example, you can determine the absolute amount of a metabolite such as an amino acid if you know both its concentration and the volume of the hemolymph containing it. We have chosen the cockroach because it is readily available and it is large (for an insect!).

Your objectives are:

1. To determine cockroach hemolymph volume by injecting a known amount of Amaranth Red dye, and measuring its dilution by the hemolymph.
2. To think about and correct for possible errors in the method.

Outline:

1. Derive a standard curve for dye concentration by a method simulating the dilution by the hemolymph.
2. Inject a cockroach with a known amount of Amaranth Red.
3. Extract hemolymph samples at given times
4. Plot your data and calculate hemolymph volume.

My friend Steve and I were partners for the cockroach experiment. Steve was the data recorder, I was the grunt who did the actual dirty work. I told you he was smart.

The experiment consisted of us diluting cockroach blood in situ with Amaranth Red dye. Some reports have indicated a degree of carcinogenicity² with this dye, and the lab manual that we were working from told us to be careful with it because it was carcinogenic. As part of my grunt responsibilities, I had to draw the extracted blood/dye mixture up into a pipette (a long measuring tube).

Drawing liquid into a pipette is done a number of ways. These ways usually involve a mechanical suction device that you attach to the top end of the pipette. The least desirable, and most dangerous method is to use your mouth as the mechanical suction device. You suck on the end of the pipette while the tip is immersed in the fluid that needs to be drawn.

Because we had spent so much time arguing deciding which one of us should do the grunt work, all of the mechanical suckers ended up being taken by the other groups in the class. It fell to me to pipette this mixture of cockroach blood and Amaranth Red by mouth.

Life in the fast lane has destroyed many of my useful brain cells over the years — especially the ones responsible for memory. At this point in the story, however, my memory becomes even hazier. That is simply because of emotional anguish and mental trauma.

I remember looking at the bottom of the test tube that contained an extremely red mixture. It wasn’t a lot. This is to be expected. Cockroaches are not huge hemolymph reservoirs since they are so small. The liquid was red and for some reason had a bubbly kind of froth on top.

I can’t remember why we couldn’t just stick the test tube into the spectrometer to measure the optical density then. There’s obviously a good reason and if I followed my footnote number 1 below I’d probably figure it out, but that’s a digression from my story.

I remember Steve looking at me with an expression of, “So what are you waiting for? Start sucking.”

So I did.

The pipette that I was using had a relatively thin lumen and required quite a bit of suction to get it started. Once started though, capillary action helped out a bit.

I drew the blood mixture up into the pipette and was quite pleased with the way it was pulling in. I was so pleased, in fact, that I decided to try to empty the test tube if possible.

Sucking away at the end of the pipette, the test tube slowly emptied — and then I got to the froth that had been sitting on the top of the blood.

Drinking milkshakes has never been the same since that day.

I remember the gurgling within the test tube as the froth sucked up. That’s the same sound that a nice chocolate milkshake makes when you get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately the way the air bubbles in the milkshake’s straw break the suction and cause the drink to deliciously sputter into your mouth is the same way the bloody froth broke the suction in the pipette and caused the bright red cockroach hemolymph to sputter into my mouth.

Steve’s eyes slammed open. I think he might have even started running around in circles with his hands clutching out for something to help me with. But what?

He remembers seeing my surprised expression, mouth half open, and red stuff pouring out of the corners of my mouth. It was like I had just feasted on a vampiric meal, only to be surprised that it wasn’t actually blood. In my case, however, it was actual blood — insect blood.

I ran over to the nearest sink and spat out the potentially carcinogenic stuff all the while trying to keep things quiet so that the other people in the class wouldn’t notice what a couple of idiots we were. A ton of copious rinsing was performed afterwards.

I don’t remember if we were able to salvage enough hemolymph to continue with the experiment. As usual, I probably got close to a failing grade on that experiment.

So what did the blood taste like?

To be honest I don’t remember. When I think of the taste, all I remember is the colour red, and the smell of the chemicals around us in the lab. I’m sure the mixture was tasteless.

The point of all of this is that my friend Steve has remained a good friend even though somehow I ended up getting the wrong end of the stick in our joint ventures. That wasn’t the only time we worked together and I got screwed. I remember at least one other experiment: The physics one where we were doing something with a big glass sphere containing Mercury.

What a pretty thing Mercury is at room temperature flowing around in an amorphic homogenous mass. So precious. This neurotoxic metal that gets absorbed through skin is not so pretty, however, when the glass container it is in breaks and it leaks out in the blink of an eye onto the hand of the grunt holding the container.

Yes. that would have to be me.

For some people, death flirted with them in university because of their social activities, but not for me. Death flirted with me during the process of learning.

I’m lucky I’m still alive after those hazy university days.

1. http://www.ableweb.org/volumes/vol-15/8-smith/8-smith.htm
2. http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/AM/amaranth.html

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments |

Q31: Pam Pollister writes: What color is the blood of a cockroach?

A: Pam, The long answer: Cockroach blood is not red because they do not use hemoglobin to carry oxygen. In fact their bloodstream is not used to carry oxygen either. They use a system of pipes called tracheae to bring the oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from their tissues.As a result other factors determine the blood color. Male cockroaches have relatively colorless blood. Larval females have colorless blood. Only adult females which are producing eggs have a slightly orange blood because of the protein vitellogenin which is made in the cockroach liver (its fat body) and transported through the blood to the ovary. This protein like chicken yolk is orange because it carries a carotenoid, which is a vitamin A like molecule needed by embryos to develop normally.

The short answer: Cockroach female adult blood is occasionally orange. All other cockroach blood is colorless.¹

Insect blood is actually called hemolymph, or haemolymph for those of you who are not American. But I digress. Let’s back up a little bit.

I have known my friend Steve the longest of any of the friends that I currently have. We haven’t heard each other’s voices in at least 10 years — I’m hoping that he’ll correct me if I’m wrong. The black magic of facebook has kept us connected though.

Our friendship started in high school. Every one of his friends, except for me, were weird and strange and not very popular. He made fun of me, influenced me to attend a university that almost caused me to commit suicide, and gave me shit for talking too much in class. He’s much brighter than I. He’s been on a televised game show and he’s shaken hands with a former prime minister of Canada (Pierre E. Trudeau). He was my lab partner in BIO110.

BIO110 was one of those first-year courses at the University of Toronto that was meant to weed out the people that wanted to go to med school but weren’t academically capable. The sheer volume of information that we had to regurgitate for that course was unbelievable. If I had entertained thoughts about medical school, they were dramatically diminished after I finished this course. The remainder of any potential ideas for medical school were blasted away after organic chemistry in second year. I’m lucky that my life’s path took me to dentistry — which I do immensely enjoy. Hey, if it weren’t for dentistry, I wouldn’t have met that hormonal person who can’t speak english but still likes to comment on my blog. If it weren’t for dentistry, I wouldn’t have met my wife. But I digress yet again.

As I was finishing my degree I really didn’t know what I wanted to spend my life doing so I majored in physiology, got a minor in economics, and took enough courses that I could have received minors in geology and computer science. Computer science is where I met my other buddy Rudy, whose blog you might peruse every so often. We used to play netrek and otherwise waste time that should have been used for studying. Looking back, I was in school for oh so long. My bachelor’s degree took me 5 years, my dental degree 4, my internship 1, my specialisation 2. Good thing Steve and I skipped a year in high school. Actually he might have skipped 2 years, but I can’t remember that far back too well. I’m digressing again.

In BIO110, Steve and I learned about mushrooms, arachnids, women, and cockroaches. Cockroaches are invertebrates. Women are vertebrates and there was this one polish girl that I specifically attended class to check out. She smelled kind of strange, but I really, really liked her–even after I found out that she was engaged.

It is of the experiment in BIO110 in which we learned about cockroach hemolymph (haemolymph if you’re not from the States) that I draw your attention. In my undergraduate university days I became more intimate with a cockroach than I ever thought possible…

Coming Soon: Carcinogenic Concoctions.

1. http://boards.9thwonders.com/lofiversion/index.php/t58015.html

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 14 comments |

He arrived at the hospital shivering and soaked and with rope abrasions around his neck. Apparently he had tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree branch. The branch broke, he fell into a stream and almost drowned.

He was in quite a bad state of mind, not because of his failed suicide attempt, but because he almost drowned…

© Calculus for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments |

This last week started out on an abjectly depressing note for me. Some major (almost catastrophic) family issues caused me to really withdraw into myself. Things have slowly been resolving and through the support of my wife, my brother and his wife I’m almost back to myself again. Thankfully my patients didn’t suffer too much.

I now know who does and should matter most to me in this short life that we live.

I’ve always maintained that blogging is a therapeutic exercise for me. Although through my comments this week you’ve probably had no inclination of what I was going through, my blog and its readers have been an anchor of sanity for me.

Thank you all.

© Periapex for The Periapex, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments |

“…express an interest in learning about that particular breed; cater to the ego and ask how long they’ve been breeding/exhibiting – in dogs longevity is a source of pride. Ask a breeder how they choose prospective mates or how they choose which pup to keep.

I’d stay away from the usual….how do you walk that many dogs; or how do you deal with mealtimes; or do you win any money at dog shows (the answer is no haha); or how much do you sell your puppies for.“

© Ameloblast for The Periapex, 2007. | Permalink | No comment |