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About two years ago one of my molars was giving me trouble. When I went to the dentist, he diagnosed a small cavity, though he couldn’t really see one, and inserted a filling in the offending tooth. Despite his efforts, it still felt like the tooth was going to break every time I bit down on it. I waited a few uncomfortable months until we could change our insurance plan and go to a new dentist whom we had just met at church. Within fifteen seconds of my sitting down in his chair and with the help of his way cool, micro-camera that blows those little round dental mirrors on sticks away, Dr. Erik diagnosed a crack. Yep, a crack. “What on earth could cause my tooth to crack?” I wondered. I wasn’t eating Jolly Ranchers (ask Tom about them), chewing ice on a regular basis, or interested in getting into the Guinness Book of World Records by pulling locomotives with my teeth.

Together we pieced together the puzzle. In the depths of slumber, I was releasing all the stress of my home-schooling days and book-writing nights by clenching my teeth. I knew sometimes my jaw hurt when I woke up, but never imagined I was biting down with such force that I could crack a tooth. The remedy was a crown, excellently executed by my most wonderful new dentist, and something called an occlusal guard, a beastly hard, plastic device that fit over my top teeth and absorbed the force of my clenching. Unfortunately my tenure with the guard was short-lived. I received it in a liquid-filled plastic bag and was instructed to keep it hydrated at all times. If I didn’t it would wither like a Shrinky Dink or my old retainer that Tom cooked one Christmas with a batch of crescent rolls—don’t even ask. This was simple to do while it was in my mouth by night, but nearly impossible to achieve by day. I tried using a retainer case flipped upside down, but it leaked and sometimes mildew would grow on the device. Yuck! I substituted Listerine for water in an effort to stave off the mold, but this only left me with a blue puddle on the counter instead of a clear one. I began to slack on wearing the thing, convincing myself that I was over the clenching. The book I was writing was done, the kids had gone back to school for a year, and life was simpler. Soon the occlusal guard was half its original size and any possibility of wearing it again evaporated. (Erik…if you’re reading this, sorry.)

This spring I got another crack-induced crown and last night I think I clenched harder than I ever have before. Delusions of unbooked campervan reservations, yet-to-be-purchased travel underwear for the little kids, and forgetting some critical gadget or document at home danced through my mind. We leave in 11 days and there are still about 487 things left for us to do before we board that first plane. Clench.

All of this got me thinking, why not put my stress to good use. People run, walk, swim, and jump rope to raise money for worthy causes, why shouldn’t I stage a “Grind Your Teeth for World Peace” campaign? I and people like me could solicit pledges for each hour of clenching and before you know it, we might have enough to fund a global, grass-roots peace initiative. Just an idea…

I don’t have any pictures of the occlusal guard or my teeth, but here’s a picture of a parrot (who is still alive at the Hogle Zoo).

Technorati Tags: Clenching, Dentistry, Occlusal guards, Round the World, Round-the-world, RTW, Tooth grinding

Our family struggles with punctuality. Individually, any one of us can be on time to anything, but put us all together and 15 minutes late seems to be the best we can muster. Perhaps we dawdle because we assume that someone else in the group is taking longer or moving slower than we are. Perhaps we just aren’t eager to hop in the car together. It’s hard to know exactly why we can’t achieve timeliness. A few weeks ago, I was feeling pretty proud that all four kids and I were going to be in the car and ready to make the 30 second drive to church from grandma’s house three minutes EARLY. Bells were ringing, angels were singing, I think I felt the earth move. Three of four were loaded and one was fully clad and exiting the building when not three feet from the door he made a detour—-the bathroom. Uh oh. Now this particular child is one of the younger in our family and has not yet mastered his bodily functions sufficiently to schedule them around planned activities. “How long do you think you’re going to be in there?” I inquired, since the car was running and people were waiting. “I don’t know,” echoed a little voice faintly from behind the door. Twenty minutes later he emerged with a grin on his face and feeling much better. We were only 25 minutes late to church that day.

What I realized at that moment was that no matter how much we schedule on this trip, there will always be a chance that circumstances will preclude us from fulfilling our plans. Upset stomachs, lack of clean clothes, misplaced cameras, and bad moods are just a few of the potential spoilers out there. Yesterday he of the ill-timed bowels simply did not want to be upright at the designated hour and was deposited in the car against his will, causing yet another lengthy church delay. This child seems to specialize in dragging his feet (and forgetting his shoes), but the remaining five of us are equally inclined to cause disruptions to a schedule.

As if we needed reminding of this fact, I donated the past two weeks of my life to some nasty, untreatable bacterial/viral hybrid lung and throat ailment while Tom managed to throw out his back lifting weights in our basement. I struggled to remain functional during my illness, but Tom ended up supine and completely looped for two days. Friends brought him meals and muscle relaxers and our imaginations carried us to places we didn’t want to go: would we have to stay home, postpone our departure, go through another difficult surgery and long recovery? Should I return to Georgia to feed him, console him, and drive him to appointments and possibly work? I videoconferenced with him and could see the state of the house from the computer screen. If he couldn’t walk, how could he clean up? Assuming he improved enough to travel to Utah, what kind of debris was he going to leave behind in his temporarily handicapped wake? After a long weekend of suffering, a friend took him to the doctor last Monday morning. After examining his X-rays, he made the diagnosis: lower back sprain. The treatment: no surgery, just lots of pain killers and avoidance of extended periods of sitting. That’s going to work well for our upcoming 35 hour series of flights from Salt Lake to New Zealand!

Rather than shaking me, our recent experiences have actually reinforced my philosophy that despite my Type A, control freak personality, I must resist the urge to overplan. We have plane tickets, yes, but with the exception of one flight I booked two days ago (New Zealand to Australia), everything thus far is completely changeable and refundable. If someone get sick, sprains an ankle, or we fall in love with a particular locale, we stay put. If we all get bored, can’t find any good restaurants, or learn about a new place we simply must see, we move on. Though we still won’t be able to control the length of bathroom breaks, if we operate on a premise of flexibility and resist the urge to set an adult-paced schedule, we should wend our way around the world successfully and without any undue, self-imposed stress.

Just remember, if you’re meeting us somewhere along the way, it might not hurt to be twenty minutes late.

Technorati Tags: Planning, Lower back sprains, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Travel

I don’t care how old you are, how much you’ve traveled, or how much time you’ve spent in a hospital, shots are never fun. My little kids, who usually handle immunizations with relative grace, came completely unhinged yesterday in the face of their last remaining injections before the trip. We traveled to the Utah County Health Department Immunization Clinic in Provo but did not brief them on the cause for the visit. They had no reason to suspect anything as the lobby was packed with people of all ages and no one was in apparent distress. After a brief wait and a lengthy consult with the travel nurse, I was led to a sterile room to review the protocol and examine the syringes and vials. The nurse was insistent that I see exactly what I was getting since I was shelling out such big bucks. The plan was to sneak the little kids in one at a time and quickly poke them while they weren’t looking. The element of surprise is usually our greatest tool for a tear-free immunization experience. I lost the upper hand, however, Read the rest of this entry »

In my frantic quest to get the house and yard in order for our one year absence, I’ve been planting flowerbeds, filling sinkholes with dirt, spreading pinestraw (a unique Georgian groundcover/mulch), and hauling lots of landscaping materials from point A to point B. As I was clearing out the trailer that I use to haul stuff around with Tom’s John Deere tractor (we have a BIG yard), I grabbed a stack of muddy cardboard rectangles my father-in-law had used in his planting efforts the previous month. With all my 5′2″ might, I stretched my length-challenged arms around the edges, and subsequently found the dirty, decaying slabs pressed against my face and torso. I made my way to the curb, where the trashcan awaited, and with a mighty heave flung them onto the top of the container. Much to my horror, I discovered that a four inch scorpion had just hitched a ride down the driveway and been pressed between the cardboard and my midsection. I shrieked and ran to find my very large husband, whom I instructed to be a good protector and “go get it.” The prehistoric, reptilian-looking arachnid was nowhere to be found (it probably made its way into the mounds of trash beneath), but Tom knew that it was not a figment of my imagination. You see, since moving to Georgia, we’ve had no fewer than six scorpions in the house, though none to rival the size of this one. If I had only read the article I printed out upon our first encounter with the beasts, I would have known that “Scorpions are nocturnal and hide under debris, including boards, rocks, tree bark and rubbish piles during the day. They’re attracted to areas that provide shelter, moisture and their prey — mostly insects,” I might have been a little more careful. (See the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences for more if you’re interested.)

When my stepfather visited this week, he asked, “Aren’t there going to be a lot of dangers on your trip?” “Like scorpions,” I thought. Tom assured him that the greatest danger our children will encounter during the next year will be him. He is perhaps the most loving father on the planet, but if the big ones fail to do their schoolwork or the little ones refuse to hold our hands in a crowd, he’ll waste no time in setting them straight. We do not particularly fear exotic, deadly critters, suicidal terrorists, or bird flu; we wouldn’t be doing this if we did. Our biggest concerns while traveling will be the very same ones we face at home: looking both ways before crossing the street, wandering off at the sight of something shiny or a video game arcade, slamming fingers in doors, and getting stung by bees.

We are not naive to the dangers that exist in our lives or to the need for extreme vigilance in protecting our children, but given the proper medical prophylaxis and common sense, we do not believe they will be much greater on the road than they are in the Atlanta suburbs. So remember, no matter where you are, don’t walk in tall grass (snakes) and check wood and debris piles for nasty critters before clearing them.

Technorati Tags: Danger, Georgia, Health, Scorpions, Travel

My mother-in-law once came back from Mexico with a nasty digestive bug that the doctor told her she would have had to lick a toilet seat to contract. We believe her when she says she did nothing of the sort, but ever since her experience, the family has been especially wary of travel-related illnesses. The gamut of potential maladies we will confront on the road is mindboggling: simple traveler’s diarrhea, typhoid, rabies, yellow fever, malaria, meningitis, cholera, hepatitis–the list goes on and on. Some are preventable with vaccines, but others can only be avoided through a combination of luck and common sense. One of the strangest aspects of our trip seems to be that as many of our friends are turning their homes into bird flu isolation chambers, we’re heading to the source of the world’s current public health bugaboo.

Having done all the relevant research, I turned to my doctor for advice on which vaccines to get. She just looked at me with a semi-vacant stare and gave me the number for a local travel clinic. I called the clinic and was told that for the low, low fee of $50, plus $25 for each additional member of my family, I would get a specialized report outlining all the CDC recommendations for the countries I’ll be visiting. Great! Have they heard of the internet? I’ve already built that same report on the CDC
website and obtained a copy of their guide for physicians called the Yellow Book. When I asked about prices for vaccines, my jaw dropped. Steep doesn’t suffice. To add further insult to injury, when I called my insurance company, they informed me that any immunizations for international travel will not be covered! I called the county health clinic in Utah where I’ve gotten travel shots in the past and found their prices to be much more reasonable. The fact that we can walk in instead of scheduling an appointment three weeks in advance is also appealing. Even so, when I did the math, I realized we could be spending up to $5000 on shots! Definitely something we had not included in the budget. We’ll probably drop rabies, which requires three shots each at $146 a pop. That’s $146 times 18!!! We would save about $650 if we ditch yellow fever, but I really, really want to go to Iguazu Falls in Argentina, which just barely bumps into the South American yellow fever zone. We’ll
have to think about that one.

No matter what we end up doing, I’ve decided meeting our travel health needs is a lot like buying an Oriental rug. Crafty purveyors prey on our ignorance while trusted sources don’t want to deal with a specialty they choose not to understand. I once bought a hand-tufted but mass produced Indian rug on one floor of the LA Mart for $500. Earlier that day another store owner on a different level had offered me the same exact rug from the same exact manufacturer for $2,500! Now I get all my rugs off of Ebay. Too bad they don’t sell vaccines.

Technorati Tags: Health, Round the World, Vaccinations, Travel