Focusing on more important things...

The great exploding face incident continues; two stitches liberated themselves from my lip today, completely intact. I should maybe be concerned about this, but I'm so happy that they're no longer poking out and annoying me that I'm instead choosing to believe that those particular stitches weren't all that necessary. I will continue my ice/antibiotic/painkiller regimen, and provided I don't develop a fever or any scary swelling, I plan to assume that all is well.

I'm still working on my talk for my committee meeting, so rather than spend a lot of time writing a post, I'll give you something else to entertain you. From time to time I write about an organization that I volunteer for, Christmas in the City, an all-volunteer non-profit here in the Boston area that helps out homeless families. WCVB Channel 5 in Boston has a news magazine called Chronicle that profiled CITC after last year's holiday party. It's well worth a watch. Here's part 1 (of 3)



I'll get you the rest in my next couple of posts. If you're in Boston and interested in helping out, please check out the CITC website. You'll be very glad you did. Also, from what I understand, an effort is underway to get a similar organization going in the DC area. Their website is here if you're in or around DC and are keen help out.

Something to look forward to...

Hmmm... well, the infection in my lip is clearing up nicely, but I now get the wonderful new treat of having the "buried" stitches starting to unbury and have their tails poke out. I have a thesis committee meeting coming up on Friday, so I'm now faced with the exciting possibility of presenting my work with a serious speech impediment, a bit of a drooling problem, and a tendency to use my tongue to play with the little spiky bits protruding from my lip. That should go over nicely. In addition to that, I have the soothing knowledge that since it hurts a fair bit to talk for five minutes, it's going to be excruciating to have to talk for over an hour. Great. Because the stress of a committee meeting isn't bad enough on its own.

But, after Friday, it will be done. Hopefully it won't be too catastrophic. I'm trying to convince myself that it won't be that bad, and that afterwards I'll be able to get back to thesis writing. What a reward, huh?

In the realm of things to actually be enthusiastic about, in a few weeks the ice will go in at the 'tvte, and I'll be able to get some regular exercise. I already had a chance to play in a tournament a couple of weeks ago. We split the two games I started, a 3-2 loss and a 1-0 win, but even with the loss it was nice to get out there and work the kinks out. Here's me, making a save, with my face blissfully safe behind my kevlar composite mask:



If only I had been wearing that mask for softball on Thursday. In any case, hopefully more of the pictures I have in the future will be like this, and not of the gory variety. I'm starting to feel too old for all these injuries.

For now, I'm going to get back to polishing the slides for my presentation. And pondering how long it will take these spiky things in my lip to dissolve and stop bothering me. Gah.

Gory Picture 8: Softballs are not actually soft...

I seem to be getting a lot of hits from people doing a google search for either "gory pictures" or for "wisdom tooth extraction pictures". As quite a stroke of luck for the people who are looking for pictures of either gore or dental incidents (but not for me, personally), I took a nasty softball off the chin last Thursday. Fortunately I didn't lose any teeth, but it is a pretty miserable injury. Here's me at the ER, before they got around to cleaning me up:



It was a reasonably fast trip to the hospital (2 hours or so), given how many people were in the ER at MGH, but then again, most people weren't dripping bloody drool. They cleaned it up, put four buried stitches in my lip, and sent me on my way.

The next day was pretty good; the swelling went way down, and it wasn't too excruciating. Here's an external shot - you can even see where the stitches on the softball hit my chin:



And a quick view of the inside:



Unfortunately, what appeared to be an infection developed on Saturday, so I had to go back in. The swelling had gotten considerably worse, it was agony, even while I was taking percocet, and it just didn't look good. So now I'm on some angry antibiotics, and keeping a close eye on it. It looks waaay gnarlier than it did on Friday, even though it's improved considerably since Saturday. When I get access to a good camera, I'll try to get another pic. I'd hate to let down my only fans..