for want of a tooth..

my wisdom was lost. Or will be or may be. So kindly excuse me for my blabbering hence forth. The ordeal which started a couple of months back, i.e. the recurring headaches which led me to undergo various medical tests like the MRI and the EEG and which was finally traced back to the teeny weeny tooth at the far end of my mouth, would hopefully end now. I always used to feel a tingling pain in my left lower jaw when I used to get headaches. I attributed it to the headaches. Didn't think it could be the other way round. After procrastinating my visit to the dentist for about a month, I finally paid a visit a couple of weeks back. The examination quickly led to the conclusion "Your wisdom tooth is in a state of decay and has to be extracted". Sounded simple. So I took the appointment the next day notwithstanding the fact that I was extracting a tooth after close to 20 years. I thought I could get away with using medicines or any nonsurgical/extraction methods but the advice from the prosthodontist was to get rid of the redundant part of my body lest it leads to further complications later.

What do I do after coming back from the visit? Promptly google 'wisdom tooth extraction' and read the oh-it-so-simple stories to horror stories about the whole process. I braced myself for the 'surgery' the next day only to get it postponed. The surgeon was a bit hesitant on operating on someone who clocked a 160/90 on one fine bright sunny day a couple of months back. Taking me to be an hypertensive person, he advised me to get my BP checked one more time and also product a fitness certificate. I had a hard time explaining that the spike was a temporary one and my BP has been normal since. So after two weeks of monitoring my BP, I finally went to get the damn thing extracted today. I was not helped by the fact that a friend of mine , who happens to be a doctor, scared the crap out of me by giving me all the gory details about the anatomy of a tooth. Apparently it is connected to a nerve cell and complications can creep in if the nerve cell is affected during the extraction.

The procedure went well, but a a tad longer for the doctor's taste. Apparently he had trouble extracting the obstinate tooth because the roots were quite strong. I could see the expressions and sweat on the doctor's face as he used a plethora of surgical instruments including what looked a driller to me !!. Another late discovery during the course of the procedure was that the nerves were pretty close to my tooth which slowed down the doctor's progress. After some struggle, the tooth was finally plucked out. He wiped off the sweat and remarked 'Phew that was one stubborn thing'. He complimented me by saying that not many can endure the stuff that was done on me today and that I was one of the strongest male patients he had come across !!! Now I don't know if this 'praise' is reserved for all this patients:)

No pain yet, though it has been a good 7 hours since I was given the local anesthesia. I hope it isn't bad. Suddenly I have this craving for hot spicy food which the dentist advised against!!. Reminds me of the dialog from the movie 'The Hangover'. He is not a doctor, he is a dentist!!!
With all the medical checkups I have been undergoing in the past few months, a friend remarked 'Like a car which undergoes routine maintenance checks before its sold, I am also going through the same process before my marriage' :)

An escape !!

Either I seem to write when something interesting/untoward happens or something fascinating happens when I begin to write !! I had a brush with ....err....my inner self a couple of weeks back. I was in an auto traveling back from another brush with destiny when a son of a gun driving in a Hyundai Santro hit the auto from behind. All I could feel was a huge thud and then everything around me starting to swerve as the auto gracefully inclined to one side, on two wheels, overturned and skidded on the road. It happened in a split second. I went blank. I just stood up, lifted the auto to free my left leg which was trapped under the wheel, and walked to the pavement and sat there for a while, still unable to comprehend the goings-on. Passers by stopped by and inquired if I was doing fine. The autodriver had hit his head and was lying on the road. We lifted the auto up to free him. I did not see any bruises on me, hence walked off, took another auto and reached home while the autowallah's and onlookers argued with the Hyundai driver on the amount of money he would have to shell out. Only after reaching home did I realize that I had 4-5 cuts and wounds on my left leg and a sprained ankle.

It didn't help that I was coming back from an appointment with a neurologist and that I was scheduled for a MRI scan the following day. The MRI scan revealed something fishy which led to other tests like EEG and extensive blood tests. At the end of it all, I was relieved to hear that there was nothing serious about my recurring headache. It was just a tiny weeny tooth at the far end of my mouth that was trying to cave its way to the top which was the 'root' cause. But I tell ya, these private hospitals !! First they instill the fear in you by suggesting all these tests which are costly and then give you a clean chit. How can someone have a peace of mind when a senior doc gives a piece of his mind by mentioning brain scans etc. Anyway, it was good that I underwent all those tests. Put my restless mind at ease else I would have been battling nightmares all this while. Try searching for headaches,MRI on google and you will know why. Everyday I learnt about a new disease : brain aneurysm, migraine, brain hemorrhage, epilepsy, brain tumor. My inquisitive mind did its research before each of the tests and the possible results and it didn't help soothe my nerves a bit !! It's a bane to have all the information at your fingertips !!!
After sleeping in the claustrophobic MRI machine for a good 30 minutes and listening to all the queer sounds ( very much like tik-tak-tak-tik sounds you hear at a tap dance show ) that emanates from the machine during the scan, the lab technician poses a question
'Sir have you had any brain seizures in the past?'. That question was enough to make my hair stand.
I said 'No, have you noticed anything weird in the scan ?'
'I noticed something but I will let the doctor talk to you'
'Well is it serious? What was it?' I tried my best to get him to talk to me. Reminded me of a scene from 'Everybody loves Raymond' where Robert tries to do the same thing ( Tried googling for the link but was unsuccessful)
He says 'I think I will let the doctor talk to you'

That conversation was all that was needed to keep me awake for 2 more nights , anxiously waiting for the results of the scan. I googled and googled looking for all the possibilities. When the reports came, my curiosity overtook my sensibilities as I tried to decipher the medical report that the radiologist had prepared. It did sound Greek to me as it went something like 'T2 HYPERINTENSITY SEEN INVOLVING RIGHT MIDDLE FRONTAL GYRUS'. I took it to my neurologist who asked me 'Have you had an head injury in the past'. I mentioned about the accident couple of days back but then I did not hit my head anywhere. To rule our further complications, he asked me to undergo the EEG and the complete blood test. One more sleepless night and I continued my googling ( I did google for the above phrase). The EEG and blood tests results were absolutely normal and I was happy to hear that my brain was functioning normally !!

It pays to be patient, not do your own research and trust the doctors judgment in these situations. The anxiety that comes from knowing the various possibilities/diseases causes more harm than the actual condition you would be suffering from.

Walk when you Talk!!

You know the feeling when the idea practiced and preached by you is finally given its due and is then conveyed to the larger audience. I am talking about the new Idea ad featuring the concept 'Walk when you talk'. Link

I have been a devout practitioner of this doctrine ever since I got myself the little toy called 'a cellphone'. I never sit and talk. I get fidgety. I always have to do the walking when talking else I just can't just speak into the phone. Its a weird habit but that's the way it is. Back in the days in Milwaukee when I was on the phone with friends/family for long hours, I used to do the 'Milwaukee downtown darsan'. I used to walk round Downtown, the art museum and the lake side while on the phone for 1-2 hours. Good enough to avoid jogging. When I wasn't doing the street walk I used to do the corridor walk in my house. I used to walk from one corner of the room to the other corner while talking. Sunday morning's were usually reserved for calls to my family and my roommate once remarked 'I wake up to PP's conversation in the morning which at first seems to come from a distance , slowly increasing in pitch, reaching a crescendo and then once again fading into oblivion.' That's when he knows I am on the phone. At times I used to wear track pants which made an awful noise when my legs crossed each other while walking. My flatmates got used to that sound after a while. They conspired to tie my legs and handcuff them so that I wouldn't walk when I got a call. I was restless. I just cannot imagine sitting or standing at one place and talking. If I do it, its out of compulsion, say when I am in the bus. Imagine my agony when I have to sit through a 2 hour tele conference at my desk with the handset glued to my ears. Its hard to resist the urge to stand up and start walking.

Now that I am committed and engaged (Yep!,that's another cataclysmic event since the last post:)), my 'kilometres/day' have increased dramatically. Living in a house on the top floor with the open roof as the balcony has its merits, notwithstanding the lovely weather in B'lore with windy nights. I get more space to walk and that adds to the kilometres covered. The security guards in the shops near my house are now used to a silhouette going back and forth on the terrace at odd hours. It helps them get some rest as nobody wants to rob a shop when there's movement nearby!!

The month of May has been significant especially the week after my birthday. At work, I finally get rewarded for all the efforts that I have been putting in. An award , a small monetary compensation and some goodies came along with the recognition. Then I committed hara-khiri by agreeing to be loyal to one person for the rest of my life. Since then I have been battling questions from friends and foes alike : Is it love or arranged ? , Where are you going for honeymoon ?, Are you moving to Pune or is she moving to B'lore? The repercussions of being in a relationship : I get warning calls from my cellphone service provider for hitting the maximum limit on my postpaid, my credit card company comes out with ways to help me pay my huge bill over time with some innovative EMI offers, an airline company has enrolled me as their member as they figured that I would be a frequent flyer on the Blore-Pune route. Please buy shares of the following companies : Airtel, ICICI, UB group. They are gonna hit record revenues this quarter!!!!. Tips from well wishers come thick and fast 'Man you need to get used to this, We are so happy to see you in this misery club' and so on..Hence my reference to the 'cataclysmic' event earlier:).Somebody please tell me something good about getting engaged. The good part though is I got engaged on 14th June while my b'day is on 14th May. So I won't forget the dates easily. One reason crossed out for any fights in the offing !!!

One other catastrophic event ( and I mean it in the literary sense ) in the history of television would be the staging of the 'reality' show 'Rakhi ka Swayamvar'. The show garnered the highest TRP's when it was launched. Not surprising, because there would be many like me who are anxious to know how stupid such a concept can be shown on TV. I did tune into the first episode and a couple of episodes later. Its amazing to see that there are dickheads around who crave for attention, ready to stoop to the lowest levels of ludicrousness, a lady who flutters her eyelids so rapidly that you begin to believe 'wish I had such a sharmili wife'. To aid the TRP's, I will continue to watch the show. After all , a dose of mindless nonsense is what someone needs after a tiring day!!!

Chapter # 30

Yes I am a proud Tricenarian now. Proud? What can I substitute that with? When the whole wide bad world is conspiring against you and doesn't leave any stone unturned to make you realise that you have 'touched' the 'hussshhh-he's thirty' age, why should I not reveal it myself :) Its not that I am the only guy in my generation to have turned 30. More than three quarters of my friend circle will be knocking on the forbidden doors this year. Some already have but are hiding behind their falsified birth certificates. Some are leading their lives under the misguided notion that they are not going to hit 30 at any point in their life !!!

I was spared from ordeal of tasting out the ingredients of a chicken mughlai or a paneer butter masala dish this time around . It was a subdued welcome, the way I like it to be. Browsing for birthday quotes made me stumble on this piece of enlightening information : "The 30th birthday is special. You are now officially a mature and responsible adult who has the necessary wisdom to make important decisions in life. The 30th birthday heralds your adult status with measured indulgence." That is some wordly wise information.

Having crossed the dotted line comes with its own share of woes
- I cannot make it to the TOI's list of under-30 billionaires..
- or the list of under-30 entrepreneurs
- will be filtered out in those groom searches
- the list of 'should-not-be-done' things just keeps getting longer

I am not as freaked out as in this

I had started with French lessons a year back. Never bothered to complete it. Now I have joined Kannada classes in my organization. I hope to atleast understand it to an extent after the mandatory 15 classes unlike the French class which was self taught (courtesy Ms Elizabeth in the CD).

Staying true to the pattern I followed in my previous birthday posts (2008 and 2007), let me sign off with a few lines from the song 'Time' (Pink Floyd)

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

picking up the bits.

Life's crawling back to normal. It is always a pain when you move to a place and you have to start things all over again. I envy my friends who have their families in B'lore. Though moving with my 'boriya bistar' is not something new, having gone through the cycle a lot in the past 10 years Balasore->Calicut->Blore->Pune->Blore->Columbus->Blore->Chennai->Blore->Milwaukee->Blore->Milwaukee->Blore. Been spending a lot ever since I landed. I don't want to be the cause of ICICI's increased revenues this quarter.

One thing I absolutely love to watch on TV, amidst the IPL and the General Elections, are the Vodafone ads. These guys come up with the most creative ads. It started with the pug being featured in their earlier ads and now they have this character named ZooZoos. The ads are witty, catchy and quite simple at that. No garish sets, no stars and its amazing that the characters are human beings in body outfits. The first impression one gets is that the characters are animated. These commercials bear the mark of great ingenuity. Almost every match of the IPL features a new ad and more than the match I am always curious to know what the next ad is. All the ads till date can be found on the Vodafone site. I have downloaded it onto my Ipod touch. :)

I have always liked the ads back home compared to the boring insensible ads in the United States. And the products themselves. The Indian consumer is often spoilt for choice. The other day I was hunting for a toothpaste at the neighborhood departmental store. Of the many varieties of brands on display, the Luscious Lychee Close up toothpaste caught my eye. I promptly picked it up (Lychee is one of my favorite fruits btw). I wasn't surprised to see ants make a beeline near my toiletries this morning. Whoever came up with the thought of fruit flavored toothpaste!! The good old white colored toothpaste is a thing of the past. I r'mber the dull orange colored toothpaste named Forhan's from my childhood days. I don't see them anymore though. The past few years have ushered in novel changes like the toothpaste with salt, toothpaste with tiny goofy particles floating in it, oxygen, iron and what not.

I will be hitting a significant milestone in a couple of weeks so I decided to gift myself a fancy bean bag!! I am an impulsive buyer and was actually scouting for a garden chair so that I could make full use of the large balcony in front of my house when this thing caught my eye. It was a costly one to buy from a showroom near the Forum mall but then heck, its a gift !!

Why put a price tag to it ?

Now this milestone also made me realize that I am not a 'bhaiya' to certain age groups any more. I am now an UNCLE !!! I was okay with the children in my extended family and the tiny tots in neighborhood calling me 'uncle' but when 16-18 year old's start calling you that, you know they have hit where it hurts most!! I was trying to strike up a 'youthful' conversation with my landlord's 18 year son when he remarked 'Uncle, I gotta leave'. How can I not give him some wordlywise advice since he had already accorded me an esteemed status. I said 'Beta, you should be concentrating on your studies, do well , be something in life and yada yada..'.

News about job losses and divorces abound in these times . A friend had a double whammy when the person lost the job and got divorced. I keep getting these shocking news every now and then. Its scary to even think about it.