Audrey's Lung Cancer
The date was April 6, 2005. It was the day before my 24 year old daughter, Sherry was to go to
a denture place and have a set of dentures made. My parents, Harold and Audrey Perry had decided to use the money they had set aside for vacation to pay for Sherry to get dentures. We had put a lot of planning into this. Dad had checked with our family dentist, Dr. Fred Pacey, back in February to see if he could do the procedure. An appointment was made for March 8th. After examining Sherry, Dr. Pacey declined because he was retiring soon. He gave us the name of a dentist here in the Quad Cities that might be able to help. Then we ran into the cold hard fact that this was going to be an expensive procedure. I had been seeing ads about a place called affordable dentures. I decided to give them a call. They are a walk in office where you walk in at 7:45 and have impressions made and you receive your teeth by 2 p.m. Then either they will pull the teeth or you can go to an oral surgeon and bring the dentures with you and the surgeon will place them over the gums as soon as he is done. We checked with a couple other places including Unglesbee's Dental Lab in Knoxville and we decided that Affordable Dentures was the way to go.
What does all this have to do with Audrey's Lung Cancer? This is where I tie things in. She had been out of breath lately and went to the hospital in March when her heart started beating fast. She was kept overnight for observations but was released the next day. The Doctor set up a chest xray for Wednesday April 6th. Mom should have had one back in January but she had been putting it off. Until this spell with her heart she had been pretty healthy. So she had her chest xray and she asked the tech what he was seeing. Usually techs are not suppose to say anything but he told her that she definitely had a disease in her lungs. When mom told me this that evening, I was furious. I always thought that techs were not suppose to tell. Later that evening I received a call from the East Moline Affordable Dentures and I was told that they were going to be closed for the rest of the week. It was not my night. We had made an appointment to get Sherry's teeth pull on April 12th at the oral surgeon in Galesburg. Since Affordable Dentures is a walk-in business, I called up Sherry and asked if she could drive to Peoria and go to their A.D. She did go and found out that she needed to get her teeth pulled in 2 phases. She has always had a bad bite with her teeth. When her back teeth were together she could stick her finger between her front teeth. She needed to get her back teeth out first for 6 weeks and then her bite could be adjusted. I drove down and took her to the oral surgeon. Mom and Kristin were there also. Sherry wanted me to stay in the room for as long as they would let me. It took less than 1/2 hour. She had 17 back teeth removed leaving just her front 12 teeth. She cried when she found out that she could meet her teeth in front. I took her home and went out and bought all sorts of soft food for her from Hi-Lo. I went back to Mom and Dad's.
posted by Cindy @ 6:08 AM
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