-- Those who read my blog regularly (hmm who are you exactly!!) will know the trials and tribulations of a dental phobia combined with a mouthful of broken teeth that has caused me much angst and much much pain in recent years.
-- Those who read regularly will also know that this year has been particularly unpleasant for me in my office due to the actions of some very weak males who go behind peoples back and make complaints etc etc.
-- Those who read regularly would know I love going over east to see my big name musicals etc etc and that its been almost 2 years since my last east coast holiday.
Well in the past two weeks all this has been resolved!
-- Teeth: A huge step forward. I have booked a trip to Bangkok, Thailand for the end of May where I will be having all of my wretched broken teeth removed - yes all 29 of them! This will be followed by the implantation of 24 lovely new titanium implants. A pain free new smile is coming my way in less than a month. A life free of over strength pain medication and penecillan to look forward to. A life of fear free eating awaits me. And the phobia - well my theory is that I can be a different person in Bangkok so that person wont have a phobia - and if that fails - they have great aneasthetic.
-- The work situation: Well I took my big wig out for coffee after easter and told her how much all these stupid trivial complaints were mounting up and affecting my mental and physical health. I explained how low I had become over easter - to the point of trying to choose between ending my career or ending my life. I explained that the strong exterior I put out there is for self preservation - I have always been a self reliant person etc etc. But that protective front was starting to crumble and so was I.
We talked for a long time and I understand things a bit better now. I understand I dont suffer fools at all. I understand those fools are the very types of people who lodge complaints when things arent going their way. I understand I need to work out who these people are and be more wary of them and my actions around them. I understand that NORMAL people understand that co workers all have good and bad days and moods etc and make allowances for that - but there are also the FOOLS - who dont look at everyday occurances as just that. They live in a different land to myself and the normal folk. So I just need to learn the difference between the normal folk and the fools!
I understand now where I stand in the eyes of my bigwigs and the respect I have earned because of my work ethic and my work output and my technical knowledge.
I understand where the fools stand in the eyes of the bigwigs.
So I confronted my boss (who was one of the complaining fools) and we nutted things out. I told him exactly what I thought of him - but I did it politely and provided examples of his poor leadership skills. I told him what I wanted and expected from him and what he would get from me in return.
I think the situation should start to improve from here. After my talk with the bigwig I felt immediately less paranoid and anxious and stressed. It was a huge weight off my shoulders.
-- The holiday: I have just come back from a week in Sydney. Highlights included:
Many lunches and dinners and drinks with new and old friends.
Fabulous front row seats to the big musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert (based on the brilliant movie of the same name) followed by 5th row tickets a few nights later because it was just too good not to revisit.
Meeting the gorgeously talented cast afterwards. (I have put a full review on my My Space entertainment page.)
Four days of non stop rain (several hours trapped under a small eave of the Opera House) left me thinking I had personally cured New South Wales drought problems.
A ferry ride during a torrential downpour.
A stunning lightning storm that lasted hours.
A single sunny day where I rushed around and completed all my preplanned photo assignments before jumping on the plane!
Hmmm what else - a bit of shopping - not too much.
I will pop all the photos up in the photo album site later this week. Meanwhile enjoy this little slideshow from the two nights.
2 May 2007. Wednesday (still raining). Countdown to new teeth has begun.
I cant believe how many emails I got since my last blog that said "what the hell are teeth implants?" So - here is a piccy of what exactly will be done to my upper and lower jaws after the extraction of all of my teeth. And there is more informationHERE which is the site for the clinic I am attending.
Yes its a pretty big deal. !!
In preparation for the surgery I have been taking daily dosages of Caltrate Plus - to boost my calcium levels in my bones to ensure my jaw can handle all this work. I am also taking daily penecillan to ensure I dont arrive with any infections that would hamper the surgerys.
In addition, I am taking a daily combination vitamin that contains Vitamin C, Echinaecea, Zinc, Horseradish and Garlic so I dont catch any of the dreaded office bugs that my building is so constantly full of.
I have also been researching travel insurance. What I have discovered is that - despite "medical holidays" being very popular over the past 3 years or so - no Australian travel insurance companies have started updating their policies to include or even disallow coverage for this type of travel. I have ascertained that being in need of dental surgery is indeed listed as a "Pre Existing Condition" and is therefore not covered - but what I have been trying to find out is - are we covered if something unforseen or unplanned happens AFTER all the surgeries ie a staph infection or something. Obviously there is a far lower risk of a staph infection because we will be nowhere near the Staph capital of the world - Royal Perth Hospital! But still - it pays to be sure.
When I am feeling brave - I may actually put up my before and after photos. That will be a pretty big deal for me because I dont even show my broken teeth to my doctor - let alone my friends!
I forgot to mention below that I will be having travel and surgery companions ! Mum and her partner Malcolm are coming with me and having work done too. Its a family bulk deal!!!!!!!!!!
I dont invisige many day tours or shopping trips personally. Not after that many general aneasthetics. I intend to take a lap top computer and a lot of dvds to watch on it.
13 May 2007. Sunday
I have a new addition to the household. A lovely travelling companion called the Toshiba Satellite A200 laptop.
For the techo's who I know will ask me - these are the tech specs:
Intel Pentium T2080 Processor 533 1.73GHz, Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic, 15.4" TruBrite Widescreen XGA(CSV), 1024MB DDR2(667), 80GB(5400rpm) SATA.
Thanks to Shane who helped me choose it and spent the night setting it up and showing me how to connect it to my other computer and how to transfer programs and files over to it.
I also bought a very cute Fiorelli Pewter Computer Tote bag - its kinda silver but in some light, looks purplish.
19 May 2007. Saturday. Chilly & drizzle.
I had the Sydney boys over for dinner last weekend. Pizza pizza pizza.
We watched the dvd of my 91 year old Pop skydiving, along with my young cuz Roxanne. Lucky devils got to dive over the beach at Coolum Beach. It looked gorgeous.
My week was painful. Its like my teeth know they are going to be pulled so they are giving me as much hell as possible in the meantime. I got no sleep because I was up every few hours reheating my wheatbag and popping more penicilan and even more panadiene forte, then of course I felt like shit all day. I ended up staying home in bed all day Tuesday and Thursday.
Today was lovely. Bec from work (the person who has been invaluable to me this year during all this shit with pricky bosses and nasty folk who lodge complaints) came to collect me and we went to Sorrento Quay for lunch at Jade on the Quay where I devoured a chicken and mushroom risotto while Bec enjoyed a caesar salad and fed the willy wagtails scraps of bread through the windows !! Then were went and selected some lucky rocks to aid us in life. Becs was a hmmm I think it was called a goldstone ?? it was bronze in colour and filled with glitter. It was helpful for decision making. Mine was an agate - so deep purple its almost black - and it will aid me in ridding my body of toxins and will alleviate stress.
Then we went to Becs house where I discovered she has fabulous taste in garden design - complete with purple walls and black water features. If I still had my house with a yard it was exactly the type of design I would have.
Home again to top up on pain meds and penicilan. Its getting to that time of year where one must decide about turning on the heater !! Lovely and cool at night. I see the forecast for Bangkok is hot and sticky - ewwwwwwwwwww.
Holiday planning checklist - hmmm I have paid for my travel insurance with SureSave. My finance comes through on Monday. I need to complete my salary sacrifice forms for the laptop. I need to find out about the tax medical rebate and whether it applys to overseas medical expenditure. I need to visit the Customs website and print off the "expensive items register". I need to start a list of everything I will need to set my dvd recorder to record while I am away! EGAD ! Good thing it has a HUGE hard drive !
27 May 2007. Sunday - major downpour - all droughts are broken !
Well in 36 hours I will be in Thailand and getting reading for my first appointment with the dental surgeon EEEEK !!!
Not sure when my next update here will be - I am getting the distinct impression my travel agent has fudged the bit about my hotel having wireless or broadband access in my hotel room. I cant see any mention of it on the hotels website. GRRR.
Packing - well I have put all the essentials one must take for camera's/laptops/phones, along with my medications in a big pile on the floor beside the suitcase. Tomorrow I will think about appropriate clothing for a yucky tropical humid summer. Difficult to comprehend as I sit here in my trackies and slippers listening to the pouring rain, with the heater on.
Slept in late again - so much for the freebie breakys! The humidity wears me down.
Mum and Malcolm headed off at 1.30 for their dental appointments and its 6.30 and they are not yet back so they must be having a lot of work done.
I have spent the afternoon answering emails and updating my blog etc. Still so tired but have to rise at the crack of dawn tomorrow to catch a cab to the hospital.
I slept thru breakfast today - I really needed the sleep after 3 days without any. Mum woke me around noon and I had breaky/lunch and went to my appoinment to fix three of my top front teeth. But after an hour it was established the loopy drugs were doing absolutely nothing to me and so it has been decided they will be fixed while I am under the general aneasthetic on the weekend.
So I have been booked into a private hospital about an hour away. I go first on saturday morning for more xrays and a meeting with the aneasthesiologist and my surgeon together and if they are satisfied I can go under - it all goes ahead on Sunday and I stay overnight. They will be doing the extractions and putting the implants in at the same time. The the next few days are fitting the wax teeth molds for size and then the new prosthetics. Then the healing process begins !
I have stocked up on 2 min noodles and soy sauce and thats what I will be living on after Sunday till who knows when.
So - off to get some sleep now - the humidity really wears you down. And really dehydrates you. We bought 6 litres of water for a whapping 40cents !.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30th May 2007: Hot & Sweaty in Bangkok.
So - Karina is in the vile polluted car mad stinking hot and humid Bangkok! Believe me when I say I would never voluntarily come here for a holiday!
So - back to the beginning - it was a boring 7 hour flight - managed to get the last remaining plane that didnt have in seat entertainment and the big screens further down were showing Norbit - oh god the pain of it!
I started watching The Queen on my laptop but the battery ran out!
Got to hotel and were given the wrong rooms (smoking rooms that stunk and were tiny- we had paid for big suites). The rooms didnt even have a powerpoint/outlet except for the one the fridge was plugged into! So I didnt sleep from being angry and around 3am I was sending nasty sms's to my travel guy! By noon we had lovely suites with extra powerpoints and wireless connections! So the laptop has a home! And it turned out the hotel is split into two buildings - one is the
cheepie short term stay smoking 2 star place - and the other building is non smoking posher longer stay suites. So we had been put totally in the wrong one.
So after a long stressful night and morning I had a nap around noon and went walking to find some lunch at 3! Then we went to the dentist at 4 and left there at 9!!!!!
I spent 5 hours with the most incredible surgeons. One is my prosthetic surgeon who is crreating my new teeth and one is my surgeon who will do the extractions and imput the implants. He is the head of Implant Surgery for all of Thailand and is very important here. Apparently they decided before I arrived that my case would be very complex and so they called him in. The surgery will take place in his private operating theatre not in the many many hospitals nearby.
They are not salespeople. We were concerned they would be trying to sell us the most expensive procedures etc etc - you know - cashing in on those rich tourists yada yada. But its totally the opposite. They have explained all the different procedures bit by bit and given the positives and negatives and actually talked me out of the very expensive procedure I had prechosen. We have a case manager for the three of us - she calls us for each appointment and sits with us and
re-explains everything in case we havent caught it all. She does all the organising and scheduling and billing etc. Lovely girl. Miss Tak.
They believe they can restore my top teeth without extraction and just a single implant. So I will only be having all my bottom teeth removed (I think on saturday) and replaced with implants. I have to make a decision about the types of implants I want and apparently I can return in 6 or 12 months and have them refitted and changed to longer lasting porcelain ones. The ones they install to begin with are plastic - similar to denture material. That allows the implants to intergrate to the bone etc and you eat soft food for 3 or 5 months (considering I have been eating mush for 5 years I can tolerate 5 months !).
Then you can continue on with the plastic ones or come back for porcelain ones. AND they dont charge for that! They create the porcelain ones this week anyway as they already have the molds ready and put them aside if you ever need them and dont charge you to fit them !
Anyway = its 2am and I havent slept for 3 days so am off to bed and will log on again when I return from my first dental work tomorrow (tho they are giving me loopy drugs so dont expect clever typing!!!!!!!!!!!!).
2 June 2007. Saturday. Updating from sweaty Bangkok.
I caught a taxi to a private hospital very early this morning. My god I have never seen anything so swish. An avenue lined with trees, interspersed with giant yellow teddy bears, manicured gardens and fountains led me to the main entrance - complete with a doorman !
I made my way to the floor I had written on a note and found my implant surgeon easily. He advised he was just about the go into a surgery and handed me over to some lovely ladies who spent the next 4 hours leading me from floor to floor to have tests (blood, urine, blood pressure, echo cardiogram, chest xrays and more) and speak to a my cardiologist and my aneasthesiologist. Both advised they were happy with all my results and forsaw no problems with the general aneasthetic. They advised they definitely wanted me to stay overnight because of my "big body" (so polite - in Aus they just say obese!!!!) and the duration of the surgery so they wanted to be able to monitor me over night after the surgery.
Then I saw my implant surgeon again and he reinvestigated my teeth and jaw xrays. He felt that the teeth on the top jaw that the prosthetic surgeon felt could be fixed with fillings were actually too fragile to work on (my personal opinion too seeing as how they are basically transparent!). I advised there were also 4 more on the top that hurt with hot and cold - he looked at them and said they were already so overfilled (a bad Aus dentist habit) that there was hardly any tooth left to hold a filling together.
He asked if I still wanted to go ahead with my preference of removing all top teeth as well as bottom. I said yes that was my preference. He said he will speak to my prosthetic surgeon in the morning and discuss with him and that may be how we go - I said I was fine with whatever he decided during the surgery.
So then my final meeting was with hospital admin who needed to know what type of room I wanted ! They showed me a list and it was like a hotel. Standard, deluxe, executive, presidential ! LOL - I went for standard. Its a private room & bathroom with a private nurse. In Thai baht it sounded expensive but when I did the conversion it came to about $160aus !
So after 5 hours of admin stuff and tests I was presented with a green credit card sized card with my name in thai and english that I need to present upon check in. I got a taxi back to the hotel. I check back into the hospital tomorrow at 4pm.
So this is it ! Tomorrow I get every tooth in my mouth removed and big bits of titanium screws embedded into my jaw !
Its 2 minute noodles for the next few months after that.
Hold breath in for a while then breathe out slowly Karina............................
Haave been out of action for a few days. I entered hospital on Sunday arvo for my surgery and thats the last thing I remember !
Basically the op lasted 7 hours and thats pretty rough on any body. My BP dropped dramatically & I had a fever etc - I was sent to the Intensive Care Unit. Threw up about 3 litres of blood etc. So they recommended I remain in ICU all day monday and tuesday. Couldnt read or watch tv - just lay there. I was connected to no less than 3 different machines and if I wanted to go to the loo they all had to come too - along with the 3 nurses devoted to my every need !
Oh plus a nerve was hit (which I was warned about both here and in Aus - 50/50 risk with any dental extractions etc) so my bottom lip and chin are paralysed. That could last about 2 months. Throat muscles are a little out of whack too - hard to swallow - Its like I have to relearn !
Finally released from the ICU yesterday arvo. Mum came an hour in a taxi to collect me.
I look so disgusting. Like an old woman. No teeth - bits of metal sticking out. 30 or more stitches. Amazingly the inside of my mouth is not in pain. Lips all split from the long procedure. They hurt heaps. BP is a bit better - just a bit spinny if I stand up too much.
Miss Tak - my co-ordinator - came to see me at the hotel about an hour ago -bearing a gift basket of noodles and a chicken extract for flavour and to keep my health up. She said that my top jaw bone wasnt as strong as my bottom jaw so the implants on the top will need about 4 months of bone growth before I can have my teeth. They are molding me a denture to wear on the top in the meantime. (God I sound 100 years old). But I go to the clinic tomorrow to try out the molds for the bottom jaw so I should have teeth for it in 4 or 5 days. Funnily - I thought the bottom jaw would be all the problems.
Mum has the same prob with her top jaw where she was getting a single implant. Her bone needs grafting - so they are doing that on friday - inserting the implant and the bone graft stuff - then she needs to come back with me in 4 months.
So yes some pros and cons - but the same thing would have occured in Aus - Only it would be costing me hundreds of thousands by now. And no hospital in aus would have given me a gift bag that rivaled any hotel backrooth freebies!
Not to mention all my medications and my extracted souvineer teeth presented in a little gift bag with gold rope handles !
oh la la.
So resting up and getting the blood pressure back to normal levels and trying to eat noodles with great difficulty.
9 June 2007. Saturday. Sunny and hottest day since arriving in Thailand. YUCK.
I have spent the past three days travelling to and from by taxi to a lab an hour away to try out the wax models of my potential new teeth and have them reshaped etc. I have had a travel companion - a Russian lady who has lived in Sydney for 8 years named Marina - she has had the same work as me done and is extremely shy and very grateful to have "such a brave confident girl to catch taxis with" !!
The fittings have been painful some days because obviously I have gaping open wounds and more than 30 stitches in my mouth - and ordinarily if I was injured and had stiches in my foot - I would not be out trying on new shoes !!!!
Plus my diet of 2 minute noodles and clear soup for 4 days meant that thru lack of nutrition I have developed a bunch of mouth ulcers ! But I discovered that the 7/11s sell ready made fruit jellys so I have been eating them for 2 days and finally have a bit more energy. Tho the aneasthetic is still flowing through my body so I am still having blood pressure problems and getting woosy.
Anyway - while chatting with the prosthetic doctor today I was asking him about my surgery as he was one of 4 surgeons in there ! I said I had been looking at the bag of teeth I had been kindly given at the hospital (what a great souvineer to try and explain to Customs!!). I noticed one tooth had pure black roots and I asked if it was from the back bottom right side. He said said yes and that what they found below it blew them away. My jaw bone was black the whole way through. He said they cut away almost 2 cm of bone till they found white bone.
They sent the black bone to the lab during the surgery just to ensure there was no danger of cancer and apparently no lesions were found. They apparently took plenty of photos and have said they will email them to me !!
So the pain I have been describing to my friends and co workers and doctors and this very blog, thats been ongoing since November - where I said it was like an ear ache and jaw ache and in my sinus and my throat gland etc - and that I asked no less than 4 different doctors if it could possible be a bone infection and was pooh poohed - well HUH! It was ! No wonder I am right that patients have to diagnose themselves.
So I was telling my prosthetic doctor today that since november I had basically been living on daily penicillan and nurofen and panadiene forte for 7 months. He was stunned. He said that explained why my body totally shut down after they brought me out of the aneasthetic. He feels I will now have 6 months or more of needing to rebuild up my immune system.
He was so amazed at the pain I must have been experiencing since November. He said that he personally in 25 years had never seen a tooth pulled to reveal a black jaw bone ! He understood my explanation of how my phobia overrode the desire to see a dentist. I told him about the time I walked around on a broken ankle for 3 months before seeing a doctor and now he thinks I am some kind of pain killing wonder woman!
So - the wax model of my top and bottom teeth has been sent to a different lab today and I return to the lab on Monday to try out what should technically be the final product. Fingers crossed.
Any way - here I sit not just toothless but now I find out minus 2cm of jaw !!!!!!!!!!! And my surgery is being talked about everywhere. Each clinic and lab I go into they exclaim "oooooh lady who had 8 hours in surgery - such long long surgery" (I thought it was 7 but I have now been told it started at 5 and I came out at 1.30am) and they pat me to make sure I am ok! And my implant surgeon (a professor who is the head of implantology for all of Thailand) has told me he is presenting my case to a conference in the US next month ! I think I have already become part of urban folklore here ! Its freaky!
Tomorrow none of us have appointments - our first free day. I think we are going to rest up in the hotel unless by miracle all three of us feel better ! The heat and humidity doesnt help I am not comfy out in it to get to the various clinics and labs - let alone to attempt siteseeing - especially when still so wonky from the surgery effects.
My camera is full of the wierdest holiday photos ever - me with surgeons, me unconscious, me trying on wax teeth, me with no teeth etc ! I better find a monument or tree to take a pic of!
Hello from home at long last :) Well after a shocking overnight flight home next to a non english speaking women who had NO concept of personal space - it that she believed what was mine was hers - we arrived home at dawn Thursday morning.
Bangkok airport (a mere few trillion dollars and 5 months old) is CRAP. I think we found 5 chairs for the tens of thousands of people wandering around wasting hours and hours. The only way (supposedly) down to the departure lounge (after three separate bag searches) was via an escalator and trying for all my might to explain a phobia and the need for a elevator was almost impossible.
The closest I got to thinking the security chief understood me was when I said I would vomite if I went on the escalator. I could see a lift but he point blank refused to let me use it. I asked what people in wheelchairs used - he couldnt answer that. I subtley advised their precious airport would get a very bad reputation for being unable to deal with people with disabilities - and I intend to write a complaint.
Finally he let me use the lift - escorted by him and several other guards - it went no where other than the departure lounge so I have no idea what the big friggen deal was. When I tried to exit the lift it was "sealed" with strips of masking tape! We had to tear it off to get out.
The departure lounge was just rows of metal seats - tired people were unable to stretch out. There were no water fountains so everyone who had had their water tipped out due to the new liquids laws had no where to refill their bottles. No shop or anything to buy a new bottle.
Then the flight - well nothing can describe the pain of the pressurised take off and landing hours. It felt like my implants were all trying to unscrew themselves from my jaws. I tried to sleep but the cow next to me was leaning all over me (and not over her neighboring husband) and her elbow was digging in my ribcage the whole night. It wasnt like she was fat - I am fat and I stick to my own personal space. She was tiny - but believed she was entitled to a lot more of my space than generally permitted.
When my special allergy free meal arrived long before her own meal - she practically leaned into my lap to glare at it. Luckily my "evil glare" needs no translation in any language.
Laughingly - it was probably the nicest meal I have ever been served on a plane - and there I was totally incapable of eating it! Nice piece of steak, asparagus and potatoes in a gravy. A roasted chicken salad on the side. A fruit salad. A nice crunchy hot bread roll! I managed to eat the potato!
We were woken at about 4am for breakfast which was stupid cos I am sure the whole plane would have preferred to sleep thru to landing. The smell of omelets and strong coffee set my poor mum off on another round of upchucking and even I (who wasnt sick like she was) felt nauseus from it all and refused a meal.
We landed in Perth at 7am thursday. 2 hours to get through customs because poor mum - who had been vomiting for unknown reasons ever since we arrived in Bangkok airport the night before - had forgotten what she had packed in her suitcase and so it had to be unpacked by a customs person.
We dragged all the suitcases up my stairs and mum was asleep before I finished locking my door. I decided to lay down "for an hour or two" and we all woke at 5.30pm ! No idea if it was holiday hangover or just exhaustion from such a busy 16 days of appointments in such hot vile humidity. It really wipes you out. To return to winter and comfy beds with lovely doonas was a delight.
So - here I am back in Aus with my new temporary teeth. The dollar vs thai baht was so good that I have prepaid all my next lot of procedures - set for end of November. I will be returning to replace the fixed bottom implant teeth with porcelain teeth (more realistic and take up less room in the mouth and long lasting - guaranteed for 30 years). And my upper denture will also be replaced with fixed porcelain teeth. All I need to save up for is hotels and flights - and hopefully I will get a decent tax refund with all the medical expenses rebate to cover that. (Didnt find out till a week before my trip that I could actually claim the foreign expenses on the medical expenses rebate - what a relief).
Meanwhile I have to learn to speak and eat and drink with a denture. Its a wierd feeling. I am extremely conscious of it - especially my new speech impediment. The top denture couldnt be matched exactly to my old teeth because they were so small and low. To have made a denture like that would have meant it would always be falling off. So I feel a wee bit bucky beaver - even tho the difference in size is probably only 3 or 4 mm. The bottom permenant teeth look normal tho.
so for now I have to heal myself - tonnes of stitches to keep my gums together, loads of ulcers. Body still wiped out from being in ICU.
will be seeing my doctor on monday and will discuss how much time I can have away from work. The idea of trying to negotiate on the phone with tax agents etc with out being able to speak properly scares me.
Still only able to eat soft foods and I wouldnt say I am really "eating". Tuesday was my first solid food in 2 weeks. Fried rice - and I had to chop the pieces of chicken into miniscule pieces and let them slide down my throat. Need to get some vitamins to boost myself up again after 2 weeks of jellys and weak watery soups.
Anyway - to those who live nearby I should be up for weekend or weeknight visits. But expect me to be really self conscious cos I am not really feeling like me just now. I know people will say "oh you look fabulous" etc etc - thats what the russian lady I was going to the denture lab kept saying. But I didnt get this done to look anything - I got it done to eliminate daily pain. Its done that (except for all the new pain of stitches and ulcers and dentures, butthat will go soon!) but there is a change to the shape of my face and mouth and smile and its me (not anyone else) that has to get use to that.
Its also disconcerting not being able to make your tongue speak the way it always has. Its so wierd. I have to say the alphabet and read books out loud etc to practice.
I have spent today boiling up huge amounts of rice - freezing sections of it. And making up jellys!
So - the first leg of the new Karina journey is over. Already researching airfares and hotels for the November trip. To those who kept their promise and entertained me with regular chatty emails and the sms's - I thank you. You have no idea how much I needed it. The contact from you all made me sane. It was worth paying the exhorbitant wireless rates in the hotel room to keep my laptop online. (for future travel advice - make sure your hotel lists FREE wireless access in room - I was paying approximately $20 every 2 days !!!!!).
Well since my return to Perth my life has been consumed by the quest to find liquid meals that are sustaining and have no nasty side effects that involve the loo.
So far I am subsiding on home made potato, leek and mushroom soup - of which I have now frozen huge quantities.
Anyway - I have not yet returned to work - the speech impediment and the anxieties about my facial numbness and other similar stuff have meant that I dont feel I am ready to return to my office just yet. But the boredom of being housebound (mainly due to the non stop pouring rain) saw me give in to temptation last week and fly off to Sydney for a quick jaunt.
I had 3 lovely luxury nights at the 5 star Star City hotel, caught up with friends, and saw Priscilla the Musical 2 more times !!
My review is below:
I got tickets for Thursday 28th in E row (about 5 in from the aisle) and the 29th in G row (again 5 in from the aisle - but this time over on the right hand side - my first time on that side of the stage!).
This musical and its storyline continues to grow on me.
The clever one liners make me cackle - even when I am expecting them.
The "Tom Cruise" line kills me each and every time - "Adam" delivers it which such a vicious dryness each time.
The buildup to "Ticks" "I've waited my whole life for this" before belting out McCarthur Park - is simply priceless - you know its coming but he builds it and builds it.
The silence right before "Bernadette" lets rip with "You've got to be f*cking joking" when the location of Alice Springs is revealed - wonderful!! Not to mention the "There - now you're f*cked" that practically gets a standing ovation.
Little Tony Sheldon moments crack me up - like running to top up the champers while driving the bus, and melting after the bus breaks down - stumbling around mouthing "help".
Jeremy - those loud loud clothes - and I mean the day clothes not the night time costumes. They are so outrageous. The brilliant lipsyncing to "Never Been To Me" - not to mention the hilarious gestures. And that voice - so powerful in McCarthur Park and so sweet in "I Say a Little Prayer" and "Always on my Mind".
And young Daniel - what can anyone say about the Venus number ! Its like a big piece of decadent chocolate - to be taken in as big a dosage as one can handle!!!! And the mimed aria aboard the iconic silver shoe - mesmorising.
Gen Lemon - how many people have the talent to steal an entire show in a mere 3 minute song. She does it. Those magnificent tits with a life of their own, that frighteningly positioned G String, the desperation in the voice and her shoulders during "I Love The Night Life".
The ensemble - you guys totally rock. The multitude of characters that you all portray are simpley wonderful. The ability to give each and every one of those hilarious costumes a character - very clever.
And of course - one of the many excuses that I used to fly over last week - the guest casting of Home & Aways Alf Stewart - Ray Meagher, as Bob. I totally loved him in the role. I found him so much more believable in the role than Michael Caton. Height-wise he was a much better physical match for Tony's Bernadette and I felt I saw a more believable chemistry between the two.
Well not much has been going on since my last update. Life at home is quite unexciting. I have had some visitors - thanks guys !!
I picked up the courage and went to a dentist (yes one in Australia!) on Monday to ask about the many painful bone fragments that have been making their merry way through my gums. They took one look and decided it was too big a job for them and referred me to an oral surgeon in Subiaco (ding ding warning bells about the price lol).
So on Wednesday I went to the expensive oral surgeon, thinking about how many things I could have had done in Bangkok for a fraction of the costs, and had a twilight aneasthetic and had the bone fragments removed and some rather sharp bones filed down smooth. I feel like I have been kicked in the head. I have another mouthful of stitches - at least 20 that I can see. My face is swollen and bruised. It actually feels far worse than after the major procedures in Bangkok. I cant sleep on my face at all - very painful to touch and very painful to try and eat soup.
I cant wear my denture because of the position of a lot of the stitches. Sigh - I am sooooooooo not going out in public !
The POLICE are coming to Perth. Talk about remembering where your fans are. But Ticketmaster has decided to auction off the best seats. You put in the price you are willing to pay for a ticket and you "may" be lucky to get a ticket. I just dont know what to do. The stadium is strolling distance from my home so I could just go and listen from outside like so many people did for David Bowie. What to do what to do. I have longed to these these guys in concert since the early 80s. Yes I have seen Sting several times in concert since then - but this is THEM - this is the ORIGINAL LADS. The real thing.
Hmmmm off to ponder this problem over - you guessed it - soup.
