Sunday December 9, 2007 11:09 PM

As soon as we stepped in to Dr. Vanni's office on Thursday they were all ready to go with the goop to take impressions for Jim's new teeth, so that was refreshing. No fight needed. When Vanni came in I kvetched about the sheer stupidity of Dr. Decidua's underlings. I asked him if he had had a conversation with Dr. Dew and how Dew told ME that Vanni had said Jim wasn't getting implants. Vanni was trying to be politically correct but he basically told me that Dr. Decidua's residents were idiots. Vanni said that he had FOUR phone conversations with Decidua's staff. He kept telling them what he had told ME months ago...the surgeons were going to have to make the determination once they pulled the teeth and took a look at Jim's bone structure 1)how many implants could they place, 2)what type of implants could they place, 3)where could they place them, and 4)could they place them at ALL. I told Vanni that I had also had TWO conversations with them along a similar vein, repeating what he had told us back in the day. Vanni just shook his head.

He took all of Jim's stitches out and we have to come back on January 4th for some kind of "bite" assessment, then Vanni will make the teeth. I found out what the "four to six months" from his office staff was all about. They apparently let the implants heal four to six months before they get finished off and the dentures attached to them. But they don't wait four to six months to make the teeth. DUH. Jim will just have to wear the dentures without them being attached to the implants. It's better than nothing. Vanni said the lowers probably won't be that stable during that time, but Jim can live with that.

Jim will have to go back to Decidua's office for a post-op visit, and I'm going to tell Decidua a thing or two about his residents. Not for nothing....if you can't deal with people and you can't process the spoken word then you really should find another line of work. I don't care how skilled you are. Those guys should just become engineers and design shampoo bottles tucked away in a lab somewhere. Hey...it's useful work. We all need shampoo bottles.

While out Christmas shopping I found some teeth for Jim. Here they are: