Ah, yet another reboot of this blog, will it ever die? Meh, who knows, but as I withdraw from other forms of social media, this is maybe the time to fire this up again.

I am inclined to maybe do too much drafting and re-writing and editing and re-editing, so maybe the way to do this is more of a seat of the pants approach. And I need to keep a bit focused so that posts don’t end up being too long, or about too many different subjects, but we’ll see how it goes…

But let’s bring you right up to date quickly so that we can move on….

Back in September, after the second round of root canals, (yea, I know, but that story is for another time), the dentist took some routine xrays to see what was going on elsewhere in my mouth. He saw a shadow on the lower jaw that he didn’t like and so he sent me to the oral surgeon to get a biopsy done.  Well, the long and the short, as you can guess, is that it came back positive (I might argue about the descriptors “positive” and “negative” when used to describe this type of test result. “I sure hope you get a positive test result from the biopsy.” What? Huh?) for something called an ameloblastoma, a type of cancer. It’s benign, which means that it can’t/won’t spread through the blood stream and pop up in other places, so that’s good. No chemo and no radiation, so that’s good, too. It’s very rare, but I think it is fairly aggressive and I think this was caught before it got too big.  All good.

It’s also a good thing that I changed dentists this summer because I feel there is no way my old one would have found this. He does a lot of fillings and cleanings in his office with the avocado chair and piles of papers behind the reception desk. It used to be quaint, but not anymore! My new dentist is highly organized, high tech, and takes his work very seriously. I like him! Oh yea, he’s also very good at what he does, so there’s that, too.

Now, it’s not like this, if left undetected, would have killed me suddenly. But finding it sooner rather than later means that the removal and reconstruction process is easier and less complicated that it might have been otherwise. So what is the removal and reconstruction process like, you ask? Well, that’s a great question and the answer shall be forthcoming…soon.