'For there was never philosopher could endure the toothache patiently'

[flemmings]

I got to see my endodontist today, or *an* endodontist, but just barely. I almost didn't-- he had to leave early and his secretary kept calling me at home and not at the work number I gave them yesterday. Le sigh. I see I must get some version of a cell phone eventually. But he gave me a super-duper anti-inflammatory to take tomorrow because it may give me coffee nerves shakes and may give me hiccups (the two known side-effects) but should put paid to this bout of dental hysteria.

(In fact I was feeling much better this morning, the naproxen after three days doing what it was supposed to do, just as its stomach-rotting effects made themselves known. The cessation of pain is such a relief, it seems like a miracle.)

And I consider gloomily that there are people in Tibet perfectly ready to burn themselves alive for the sake of their country, and I can't take a simple tooth-ache.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Hang on to your land line! When the hydro goes out in the winter, you'll be the only one with a working phone.

Hope the anti-inflammatory work!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Hydro goes out in winter time? Our electricity goes out all year round, actually-- trees can fall on lines any time. But how does that affect cell phones, she asks in all ignorance?

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

There's two issues: Your land line comes with it's own electrical power in the telephone line itself. That power comes from the switching substation. It's independent of the power to your house, and typically more protected from accidents. So if you have an old fashioned corded telephone that plugs into a telephone jack, it should continue to run even if you have no power to the house.

With cell phones, if the power goes out at your house, the cell phone will eventually run out of batteries and need recharging, even if the cell tower has power and is up. When we had the one week outage several years ago, once the shopping mall got power back people were huddled together around outlets at the mall trying to charge their phones. It looked like a mall full of wealthy homeless people. We had a working land line, but the younger one couldn't call her friends because none of them had non-electricity dependent phones.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I see. Thank you. I did wonder why telephones worked during the '03 blackout but not those with embedded answering machines etc.

OTOH a week-long blackout is rare. Four days was our max (touch wood.) How long does it take for batteries to run down if you're careful with usage?

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Yep! That's why we have both a corded phone with an answering machine and one that's POTS (plain old telephone).

Cell phones vary. Some will last a week, others only last a day or two. Also depends on if they are finding a cell tower with good signal. Mine will run itself out of batteries in 2 hours if there are no cell towers at all and it's desperately trying to find one. You could conserve power by turning it off when you're not using it and only turning it on once in a while to pick up messages and make calls.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ah-hah. So now I know why the cell my brother lent me for New York in '09 kept running down-- no towers and a dead spot near Albany.