September 13-15: Extracts

I have been lying to you.  We actually visited Chaco Canyon on the 11th.  Happy Birthday, Irene.

On the 12th we had to make a decision.  Janet's tooth had not gotten better and the pain was a serious problem.

Janet has been through this problem several times before.  She wanted the tooth out.  Returning to Reading would involve an unpleasant 2-3 day car ride.

We called Cortez Smiles.  The original dentist did not do extractions.  He referred us to a more "aggressive" young dentist in Cortez.  We got an appointment for Wednesday afternoon and starting driving the 90 miles north to Cortez, CO.

On the way there, Janet's I-phone rings; the "doctor" is having second thoughts about working on Janet due to her osteoporosis shot in July.

We show up anyway and the dentist decides that the position of the tooth makes an extraction risky.  It is lying too close to a recent implant replacement tooth.  Maybe an oral surgeon would work on the tooth.  Maybe.

But there is only one oral surgeon within 100 miles of Cortez--in Durango.  He is booked solid for another week.

Getting a dentist to pull a tooth is like pulling teeth.

We stay overnight at a motel in Cortez.  I want Janet to rest and enjoy the codeine that the dentist gave her--to take the edge off.  This is the first bed we have slept in since early July.  We wish we were back in our tent, actually.  It's more comfortable.

On Thursday morning we get a merciful call from the Durango office.  There is a cancellation if we can get to Durango by 1:30 p.m.  We are there by noon.

The oral surgeon takes more x-rays and declares Janet's previous implants to be beautiful.  Take note Dr. Muir.  Good work.

He agrees to extract the tooth that afternoon.  Within a couple of minutes, it almost falls out.  No fuss; no muss.

That's it.  We are both fairly exhausted and decide to find a motel in Durango.  No sightseeing.  No tourist train ride to Silverton on an old steam-pulled antique rig.  No Durango beer festival.  No hobnobing with the bikers who invade our motel, including the room next to ours.

What to do next?  We decide to head back to Moab--the center of our travels.  It is like home by now.  We can resupply; do laundry; wash the car at my favorite car wash; get malts at Milt's.

We can get caught up on blogging.

And while Janet sends the blogs from the county library in Moab, I can research Moab history some more.  Wait until I tell you about Charlie Steen--the Uranium king of Moab, millionaire, philanthropist, and Utah state senator.  He died broke.

Every year Moab, the self-proclaimed "Uranium Capital of the World" in the 1950s, chose a Uranium Queen to lead the Uranium Parade down Main Street.  One mining mogul kept several tons of "beautiful" uranium ore in his garage; pilots flying over told him he was sitting on a fortune.  "I always told them it was right over there where I can see it," he joked with a reporter.

And one woman remembered her mother  laying uranium ore on sick patients who came to her or giving them a concoction of uranium tea.  Many people got much better, she insisted to a reporter;  although there were people in town who died mysteriously.  Uranium and old lace, I guess.

Extracting uranium; extracting teeth.  Dirty business.