More Oral Surgery!

When I called Mom to remind her to take her evening pills, my brother Curt answered. On Sunday his wife Lori texted me to find out who Dad's dentist was because he was complaining that his tooth was sore and neither Mom nor Dad could remember the dentist's name. I sent her the info and this afternoon Curt took Dad to the dentist. It turns out he had an infection in the root of his tooth and needed to see the oral surgeon to have it removed (there was no crown on the tooth); the oral surgeon also prescribed an antibiotic for the infection. As they were leaving Dad started shaking violently from a high fever. The oral surgeon said the infection in his tooth was not bad enough to cause the high fever, he thinks perhaps Dad has another infection somewhere else; the antibiotic should take care of that, too.

Curt is spending the night there so that he can monitor Dad's progress as the fever subsides. It was up to 103F. Right now it has gone down to about 100F. And starting tomorrow I will be calling 3 times a day to remind Dad to take his antibiotic over the next week; it's a good thing I can program a lot of alarms on my phone. (I have 14 right now!) Dad also has Tylenol with codeine for the pain; when I call about the antibiotic I will find out if he also needs the pain reliever. Hopefully, the antibiotic will get him back on his feet; we were both noticing that he has been sleeping a lot more than usual.

What this incident taught me was that a list of service providers that is easily accessible by all of us that are providing care for Mom and Dad is important. The only reason I know about their dentist is because I just happened to be there when they had to go in for their annual cleaning last year. Since I knew I was moving I took a business card so I could have my records transferred to their dentist. Neither Curt nor Lori had been to the dentist with them (Dad was still driving during the day) so they did not have a clue as to who their dentist was.

We also talked about my permanent return. I was checking flights today and it looks like June 15th is a good date. I am also getting quotes from movers. I was originally going to load a PODS container myself here at the house then have it dropped off at the house in Kohala and unload it there. Unfortunately, they won't take it to the house except on O'ahu; I would have to rent a truck and hire a bunch of people to move things out of the container at the harbor and into the truck, then out of the truck and in to the house! So I decided to hire a company to move it from door-to-door so it is less stressful for me.

Happy Birthday to John!