suki-schiffer

[suki-schiffer]

Thoughts on Rule of Wolves

A compilation of my raw initial thoughts and feelings after reading Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo, sequel to King of Scars, seventh book in the Grishaverse. I just finished reading Rule of Wolves (RoW) yesterday and wanted to get some of my unaltered thoughts and feelings on paper before they become influenced by rereads and by being exposed to others’ opinions. There’s little rhyme or reason to this, it jumps all over the place, I’m not taking the time to check spellings etc. also, spoilers.

I am probably evaluating all the Grishaverse (GV) books a little too harshly because I can’t help but compare them to the Six of Crows (SoC) series which were the first books from the GV that I read. The whole reason I picked up King of Scars (KoS) last year was because I wanted more of that joy I got from SoC, only when I started reading KoS did I realize that the GV books aren’t just set in the same universe but have intertwining plots and characters at which point I realized I’d ruined the Shadow and Bone (S&B) series for myself but I did go back and read that too even though it definitely would not have been something I would have picked up if it had no connection to the other books. The S&B series wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, as it truly was a YA series with characters that were pretty one dimensional being driven by pure motives down a predictable plot. Many of these characters make a reappearance in KoS and RoW and while they have a bit more dimension to them now they are still too pure, too perfect, and my feelings about them from previous series still stuck.

I don’t like Zoya. I didn’t like her when I first read about her is SoC and I really hated her after reading S&B. Those feelings were hard to cast off when she becomes a slightly better person in KoS/RoW but the entire time I couldn’t help but think she was undeserving not just of being a main character but of being a member of the Grisha Triumvirate, of being Nikolai’s love interest, of that ridiculous amount of power, and of becoming Ravka’s queen. I felt like her “backstory” was rather forced to try to make us like her more. Like oh, how sweet, she has a secret garden with a plant for everyone she’s lost. She still came off as a bitch. I honestly still don’t know what drives her. In S&B first it’s her desire for power and beauty and the Darkling’s attentions then when her aunt is killed she joins Alina maybe for revenge? But other than Alina asking for her to be part of the Triumvirate I didn’t really know why she was in that role don’t know how or why she agreed to become Nikolai’s general, because she loved him? Or perhaps it’s because she’s still just power hungry wanting to lead the Grisha, wanting to lead the army, wanting to lead the nation?

Disregarding my feelings for Zoya, her power increase in KoS and RoW is ridiculous. How is it that she is the only Grisha (save perhaps the now dead saints) who can break down matter small enough to draw power from every order? You’re telling me that this girl manages to do this after a few weeks with Juris but people like Baghra or the Darkling who are hundreds of years old and significantly stronger and were actively trying to strengthen themselves couldn’t do this? Ilya Morozova, the Darkling’s grandfather, did all kinds of experiments, dabbling in merzost, how is it the Darkling, in all the years he spent waiting for a sun summoner, not at least dabble in the other orders in attempt to summon sun himself? If you were to rank characters by power on a scale of one to ten I would have said the Darkling was a ten but Zoya blows that scale out of the water when she becomes the dragon, a character this powerful just feels wrong. Not to mention she didn’t even really work for this power, she trains with Juris for a bit in the Fold and then makes his scales into fetters, there was no years of study and practice or meditation, no struggle, just bam! Power.

So yes, still don’t like Zoya and I think her character arc, if you will, decreased the quality of the book.

Again, I’m comparing things to SoC but in comparison RoW was rather predictable. There were definitely a few twists I didn’t see coming and a few questions that were left unanswered but with SoC I was constantly guessing at what would go wrong, what the new plan was, I was constantly on my toes. That constant guessing kept me interested, by comparison I was at times bored with this book, if I put a book down (mid-chapter even!) to scroll through Tumblr or watch Youtube videos or do something else for the sake of enjoyment before finishing that book that’s a sign it isn’t all that interesting, and that’s what I was doing with RoW.

It was just too predictable. Like oh no, the Darkling tricked you into meeting Alina and Mal, got his power back, and fled, who’d’ave guessed it? What’s this? Hanne ended up getting too much attention and might be forced to marry the prince, Rasmus, of Fjerda because of it? Ehri’s guards make another attempt on her life? Nikolai weasels his way out of marrying Ehri because his true love is Zoya, no way! Joran, this young Druskelle who is for some reason being punished by having to be Rasmus’ guard is the one who killed Matthias? Oh and why is guarding Rasmus a punishment when he could be the hope of getting Fjerda to end the war? Because he’s an abusive shit who hates feeling weak so he tries to make others feel weaker, didn’t see that one coming, nope, definitely not.

Now for a few of the things that surprised or confused me that I’m still sort of confused about. Let’s start near the beginning with the Fold suddenly, not so much as expanding as just, appearing in different places all over the world with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I didn’t really get how a pocket dimension existed within the Fold in the first place or how the saints got trapped in it but apparently breaking out of it allowed the Fold to take on a will of its own whereas it had previously been stable for hundreds of years. Also the Darkling not having any powers after leaving the Fold was confusing, I shouldn’t necessarily say “any” because he seemed to have been able to make subtle changes to Yuri’s body to make it look more like his own but I didn’t understand how his power could seemingly enter his body granting him control and consciousness but then he not have any power until he gets Mal and Alina’s blood (also wasn’t clear what he did with the blood, did he just have to touch it, did he stab all three of their hands so the blood mingled?). This just sort of felt unnecessary and that it was just a means to pull Alina et al back into the story.

In KoS it was implied that the use and existence of Jurda Parem was the reason Nikolai’s monster came back and the saints now had enough power to create miracles to entice them to the Fold and draw them into the pocket world, this theory is never mentioned again. Can you tell I’m just really confused about everything related to that pocket world?

Speaking of that interaction with Alina and co I was honestly hoping Yuri might have a bit more of a role in the story. Yuri had seemed sort of willing to let the Darkling use him as a vessel and Nikolai discovering he was still in there with the “there’s something in your beard” line didn’t clue me into the fact that there could be more to this because I assumed he was still on the Darkling’s side. But then he tries to warn Alina of what he’s about to do and I thought, oh, maybe he has second thoughts, maybe there’s going to be a fight now for control of the body and Yuri might be able to stop the Darkling from doing something sinister by fighting back at the right moment. Alas, he goes back to singing the Darkling praises. I get that Yuri is a bad guy but I still kind of felt bad for him, not enough to care about his wellbeing, at least not until the very end because as far as I’m aware Yuri was still in his body with the Darkling when the Darkling decided to have a bit of a redemption arc by condemning himself to an eternity of pain to close the Fold and keep it closed. As far as I’m concerned the Darkling deserves that fate, Yuri doesn’t.

Speaking of the Darkling taking control of another’s body another thing I was left wondering about happened in one of Nina’s earlier chapters when the new Wellmother from the convent Nina and Hanne had been at arrives at the Ice Court to accuse Hanne of worshipping the Saints instead of Djel. At the end of this chapter the Wellmother’s eyes are described as slate grey, I’ve only ever heard the Darkling’s eyes be described that way. I really thought that the Darkling was just pretending to be powerless and had actually developed a new power of taking over other’s bodies and he was just biding time by gathering intel and causing chaos this way, I thought this might have also been how he was creating the mini-Folds all over the world (look I know they had a Ravkan name that roughly translated to vampire but I’m not going back into the book to find the spelling and calling them vampires just... no). I was so concerned for Nina, here this woman is claiming to actually be part of the Ravkan spy network and that Nikolai needs her to get close to Demidov Lantsov. This order made no sense because Nikolai knew he wasn’t a Lantsov and the existence of another Lantsov doesn’t mean much, as long as the people think Nikolai is the legitimate son of the former king and queen then he outranks every other individual with Lantsov blood in terms of succession. Also if this were a legitimate request it seems like there would have been much easier and safer ways to communicate this than have someone come from across the country making false claims against Hanne that could put her under suspicion thus limiting Nina’s ability to move. I thought this was therefore some sort of trap to expose Nina, and potentially Hanne, and the fact that nothing came of it left me confused. We never see this Wellmother character again, Nina does not get exposed, when we get the Darkling’s POV in the second part of the book he mentions nothing of this encounter nor is it suggested that he actually has such a power.

I then thought perhaps if the Darkling survived and was now in Yuri’s body perhaps this was his mother, Baghra, come back to life as well. Then we get thrown a random line during one of the Darkling’s chapters where he mentions the existence of a half-sister that was also declared a saint that I don’t recall hearing about before this instance, in fact I’m pretty sure Baghra said something in the Spinning Wheel about only having one child because she didn’t want a repeat of what happened to her and her sister and that she didn’t even remember who Aleksander’s father was so if the Darkling knows of this half-sister we would assume it’s Baghra’s child. Apparently though this sister was referenced in the only GV book I haven’t read being Language of Thorns (just a side note RoW is said to be the seventh book in GV but if you include The Lives of Saints and The Language of Thorns it is actually the ninth). I could be wrong, maybe Baghra never said anything about her son being her only child, or maybe this is another case of Bardugo altering things between series. She did this with Nina’s backstory because in SoC when Matthias talks about courting her properly and having dinner with her family she said that she hadn’t seen them in years since she went to the Little Palace but in KoS and RoW she’s an orphan who grew up in an orphanage and doesn’t remember her parents. Point being, after that line I thought the Wellmother might have been the Darkling’s half-sister since she had claimed to have been a spy in Fjerda for thirteen years which would mean she’d been there since before the events of S&B, if that is true then it likely couldn’t be Baghra. I’m still hung up on this character though, for all the reasons outlined, yet the KoS series is over and she only made one appearance so maybe she just was a spy with slate grey eyes.

As mentioned previously I knew Nikolai wasn’t going to marry Ehri but I didn’t realize Genya and David were going to be the ones getting married, or maybe “renewal of vows” would be a better term. I’m perfectly content to have this come out of the blue, predictable can be boring, but then it started getting weird. I had just assumed previously that Genya and David had been married sometime between the end of the S&B series and the start of KoS as that’s when they start being referred to husband and wife (same with Nadia and Tamar) and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t the wedding they wanted. Then there’s mentions of them having a hasty wedding in Ketterdam and this just felt like yet another attempt to placate and garner hope in readers by referencing SoC. As far as I know David wasn’t in Ketterdam during the SoC series, he was the only one who stayed in Ravka, even if he was there and just wasn’t “on screen” I don’t understand why they would choose to get married then and there. And if not during the events of SoC then when? What reason did they have to both be in Ketterdam outside of the events of SoC and decide they couldn’t wait to have a proper wedding in Ravka? I was angry at this point because a similar thing was done in KoS where lines about SoC kept getting dropped and getting my hopes up that the other crows would make an appearance and they didn’t.

But back to the wedding, running off to his workshop because he had an idea during his own wedding is totally in character for David. Him dying was just evil. Didn't even cross my mind that this was a possibility, one minute we go from Genya digging through the rubble in her wedding dress saying she can’t find him then we are at his funeral. I thought he might have been gravely injured, unconscious for a long period of time, and that he’d had an idea for an invention that would help them win the war and he’d save the day by waking up in time or something. But no. My favourite character from S&B was killed off, just like that. And it was impactful, it made me cry, the fact they had found him pen in hand, fingers stained with ink, in his wedding clothes, the fact that in his notebook he has notes about how to woo Genya and she wants him to have it in death. Beautifully written, definitely salty about it. At this point in time I don’t really see how his death furthered the plot but death in real life is like that to, it’s unexpected, without reason, sudden. And perhaps, like Matthias’ death in SoC, it will be used to later start a new plot for a new story.

Now two paragraphs ago I was lamenting the fact that the mention of Ketterdam felt forced and had the intent of fooling the readers into having hopes the other SoC cast would return but then they keep hinting at it, they talk about contacting Kaz, about travelling to Ketterdam and I’m sitting there thinking please, please, please actually have Kaz meet them, don’t just be letters or some other minor Dregs sent in his place. (!!!! <- there are no words for my excitement!)

I made an audible screech when Nikolai gave money to the beggar because I knew that was Kaz in disguise. I was so pleased to hear that it sounds like Pekka did not return to the Barrel and that Kaz bought the Emerald Palace and expanded the Crow Club. I was slightly disappointed that Inej wasn’t trailing Nikolai and Zoya too or that she wasn’t meeting with them in the Crow Club probably mainly because I just wanted to see her again but there was also a sadness that it sounds like she did decide to walk a different path than Kaz. The fact that Nina had, earlier in RoW, talked about how she hoped for Inej’s sake Kaz had fixed his hair cut by now, contributed to this because obviously she thinks they stayed together. Maybe they are together in a way but long distance relationships without any suggestion of communication technology must be hard, especially when Kaz could be taken out by another Barrel boss or Inej’s ship blown up by pirates (or the Kerch as was implied by Nikolai) and the other might not ever know of their fate and certainly wouldn’t be there to save them, so I feel that due to this they wouldn’t actively be in a relationship. However, I am proud that Inej put her dreams before Kaz’s she could have given up those dreams to stay at his side and continue to be his spider, after all, that’s what he had asked her to do he wanted her and he wanted her to stay, in the Dregs, with him. Wasn’t too thrilled that she’s used as a sort of damsel in distress. Help us Mister Brekker and in exchange I’ll give you a device that acts as an early warning system against the submarines I gave the Kerch (yes they have a different name that starts with an i and there’s a z and y and m in there somewhere but instead of me trying to spell it lets call them what they are, subs) because the Wraith will be blown up otherwise as she won’t be able to get away in time.

I don’t know if it was because this part of the story was written better or if it was just because I like these characters so much more (my darling baby boys!) but I felt like the story finally developed momentum here that it was lacking previously. I love that Wylan and Jesper are living together with Wylan’s mother and acting like an old married couple. I also like that Wylan is trying to keep Jesper away from illegal activities but is also clearly continuing to work on chemistry projects and likely explosives and that Jesper’s love of Barrel flash hasn’t been quashed, Zoya actually even compliments it in her head. I also love how, as soon as Wylan hears this illegal act can help Inej, all restraint is thrown out the window. Kaz was able to pull off so many tricks in such a short time too, I love it. First dressing as a beggar, then pretending the operation will be more difficult than it is in order to drive the price up, then pretending that due to changes in how the goods are being stored at the military base they couldn’t carry out the operation with such a small crew, meanwhile he knew the Suli were there and would connect with Zoya and show them the “backdoor” to the base. Now I completely understand how Ketterdam was built on slavery or, as they like to call it, indentures, so I can see how Suli would have built the place, I imagine some of the Suli are still in Ketterdam, why they returned to the military base that night I don’t know. Also the fact they were all wearing jackal masks, something Inej said is reserved only for holy men, Suli seers, and wearing one was akin to sacrilege if you were not a seer, implies that all these people were the rare seers which seemed a bit unlikely. The fact that Zoya has this encounter and an earlier one made me think that maybe the Suli would play a larger role in RoW than what they end up doing (because this is the last we see of them, they don’t come to fight the battles, they don’t impart secret knowledge to help Ravka win the war, Zoya doesn’t find her father or her uncles or decide to learn more about her Suli heritage).

I was very disappointed with how quickly we leave Ketterdam, Kaz, Wylan, and Jesper. I suppose we do the same thing with Alina and co at the sanatorium where there is no proper goodbye. In one chapter we finish the job/plot point and in the next the main characters have left. At the end of the day I suppose I was just glad we actually had a few scenes with the crows and not just hints, was definitely the most surprising part of the book.

The crows were a positive surprise Nina and Hanne getting together was more of a negative one for me. It was hinted at in KoS but Nina has also been said to have made eyes at a pair of shoes so I had hoped the relationship wouldn’t grow beyond flirting, I feel it just diminishes what Nina and Matthias had. She also doesn’t seem to feel any remorse for moving on so quickly and even though she’s still thinking about him, about her promise to save some mercy for his people and country, and trying to fulfill her promises, she’s also forsaking him by getting together with Hanne.

That being said I, like Nina, really did believe Rasmus had killed Hanne near the end of RoW and while I hadn’t wanted them to be together the damage to the relationship Nina and Matthias had was done and I was thinking “really, you’re going to do this to my girl Nina twice, take away the person she loves, twice, for no good reason?” So that was a surprise and I was glad that Hanne did survive but I really don’t see how she could live as Rasmus and even if she could pull it off I don’t see the Fjerdan people, military, or royalty permitting a prince to marry Mila, a widowed fishwife. Nina was saying something about using her power to get the answers from the dead which I thought was a very weird development for her powers in the first place. In KoS when Nina said that she was hearing the voices of the dead I thought it was more about she was sensing a mass grave and could tell that the bodies were women and the death unnatural. Near the end of KoS I thought perhaps there were some memories left in the brains that she could access, names and how they died. But in RoW Nina is able to reach out to the dead, identify the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting and ask her questions and get answers and implies she can do this with Rasmus as well. There are a lot of logistic fallacies with this. One, it implies that people don’t go to the Saints or to Djel or to any kind of afterlife when they die but that they stick around their corpses. It also implies that Nina can probably override their free will, the women and girls at the factory had “called” to her, I doubt Rasmus and the lady-in-waiting would want to share everything so freely. Finally, if Nina can communicate with the dead then how come Matthias’ voice that she heard in the beginning of KoS was just her imagination and not really him? This could also make Nina incredibly powerful, no need to torture or bribe secrets out of someone or try to steal top secret documents, just kill them with a bone dart and demand answers of their ghost.

In regards to Nina’s power I am disappointed with how little she used it in RoW. With the exception of speaking to the dead I believe she briefly controlled two of the newly dead Priest Guard to restrain the Apparat for all of maybe thirty seconds and that was it for the entire book. While Nina has always done undercover work or subterfuge, pretending to be native to find Grisha in hiding, sneaking into the Ice Court pretending to be part of the Menagerie, pretending to be Mila the translator for Leoni and Adrik, she has always come off as a warrior to me so to not see her fight at all in RoW seemed a bit out of character. There was opportunity but it wasn't seized and honestly it left me wondering what Nina actually really accomplished during RoW, she didn't free Nikolai's true father, she didn't free any Grisha or destroy Fjerda's parem or find labs and holding facilities, she didn't help win any battles, didn't actually manage to dissuade Rasmus from war. Zoya took her from the Leviathan, flew her all the way to the frontlines of the north where there was death aplenty, and then flew her all the way back without her ever doing more than cling to Zoya’s back. Surely she could have raised some of the dead just to drive the point home, no?

The one thing I did like about the final battle was that we finally got to see the Darkling be less than perfect, a theme that sort of carried through the book. He started off with no power, mind you his scheme to get it back went off without a hitch, but then he was pretty much on the run having to trade manual labour for food. Yet he had this plan and I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t work out for him, that he’d go to the frontlines, preform a miracle saving Nikolai and Ravka, and manage to get himself declared a saint for his troubles. Instead we see him just as affected by the disk bells as everyone else, we see him try to summon shadow, try to summon nichyvoya (I acknowledge that’s spelled incorrectly, I can’t be bothered to find the correct spelling) and he can’t. I thought it was glorious.

While the Darkling did end up doing some good in RoW, helping Nikolai’s monster stay alive long enough to destroy the disk bells, shutting up the Apparat (why isn’t he dead, his character is a harbinger of bad things to come and he’s a creep, how did Zoya not kill him?) in order to give Zoya a better chance of getting the throne, and finally sacrificing himself to the Thornwood to undo the damage he let loose on the world with the creation of the Fold, I didn’t feel as though he had redeemed himself and for this I was glad. There are all kinds of evil characters in GV and the Darkling likes to pretend that his reasons are pure, that he’s protecting and strengthening the Grisha, but he is a mass murderer seemingly without empathy, he happily manipulates people to get his way, puts Genya, who at the time could be considered a child, into the king’s path, then later mutilates her as punishment for letting Alina get away, all for the sake of his own cause. In the GV I hated Van Eck and Brum and Heleen much more than the Darkling, but I do think he’s the most evil of them all, in part because his unnaturally long life has meant he’s been committing evils for centuries. I’m glad that it sounds like this is the end for his character and that while in the next series Zoya wants to free him from his eternity of agony that freedom will come in the form of death.

Speaking of the potential plot of the next series, I can’t believe that without even doing any research they are able to come to the conclusion that a “heart strong enough” is the heart of Saint Feliks and they intend to send Kaz after this, what if they’re wrong? Also, they finally bring Inej into the story for Zoya’s coronation, don't know what reason she had for being there. But then we’re done dirty because Inej doesn’t get to meet Alina although she catches sight of her, and they are ready to send Inej back to Kaz with a message about finding this saint’s heart but she’s already left so they’re just going to use a plain old flyer instead! You could have at least sent our darling Inej, treasure of our hearts, back to do Kaz the honour of acquiring him a new heart. But no, brief meaningless appearance and she’s gone.

Unfortunately, it seems there was a lot of things I was displeased with in RoW. I think overall the main problem the RoW (and KoS) is that it just became too big, the characters became indistinct because they grew out of character, there were too many references to past stories and characters in attempt to please readers rather than for the sake of the story, there were too many characters and plots to keep track of in general, and due to all this I couldn’t remain suspended in disbelief. I approach this as someone who entered the GV through SoC, I picked up SoC because the story was interesting, I picked up KoS and S&B because they were set in the same universe as SoC not because I particularly wanted to read those series. I had thought I could be interested in KoS on its own because it is more complicated than a typical YA novel and Nina is one of the main characters but now having finished RoW I have to say that if the GV really was just a collection of stories set in the same universe but with no intersecting of series I would have never have read this one. Will I go back and read KoS and RoW again? Yes, of course. Will I sometimes pretend that it never existed when I reread SoC? Yes, of course. But I do think the wait and the hype was worth it even if just for the few chapters with the Dregs again, because let’s face it, that’s what I personally was waiting for.

So I wrote this as a Word document over the span of three days and it’s now over 5000 words long, completely unedited, no order, probably reads like chaos. I want to see if and how my opinion changes over time but I’ve decided to post this because I like reading and watching others react to things I like so maybe someone else out there is like me and will find this and get some enjoyment from this.

[suki-schiffer]

Finding incomplete stories you wrote set in the distant future of 2020 is a mood

[suki-schiffer]

We’re stuck with him for another 3.5 years, think of the damage he will do. He’s trying to privatize everything, by targeting public education like this most schools will become dysfunctional and be unable to offer a decent education. Rich parents will therefore send their kids to private schools with smaller classes, better resources, and more electives meaning public schools have fewer students which he will use to justify closing schools and getting rid of more teachers.

I’d like to be optimistic but...

The Ford government is planning to cut 3,475 teaching jobs over the next four years in a move that will save $851 million, according to education ministry memo, obtained by the Star.

Details of the plan to phase out the full-time positions, starting this fall, are outlined in documents sent out Wednesday to directors of education and senior business officials in the province’s school boards.

It also includes job losses because of declining enrolment.

Some 1,558 full-time teaching jobs will be gone by this fall, which goes up to 2,177 by 2020-21, the memo says.

For the 2021-22 school year, a total of 2,915 jobs will have been phased out, for a total of 3,475 by the fall of 2022.

Continue Reading.

[suki-schiffer]

Let’s talk about how classist the hiring process is

So I’ve been looking for work for awhile now and I can’t help but realize how classist the whole procedure is.

Even to obtain minimum wage work (which we know isn’t enough money to survive on) you have to spend a fair bit of money. You need access to a computer and potentially a printer to type up resumes, cover letters, references, you need to obtain transportation to interviews, you need money to buy nice clothes for interviews. Admittedly, if you struggle with this there are a fair number of government services that will help you get a job. Key word here being “a” because while they’ll let you use their computers and printers and will critique your resume and give you a bit of money for transportation and a suit that help only goes so far, and that endpoint is typically a dead end job.

The whole idea of capitalism is that if you work hard you can be successful but, at least in today’s society, working hard will get you no where. Cashiers making minimum wage can work as hard as they like, they can put in overtime, get stunning annual reviews, but they won’t be asked to become managers. No, the company wants to hire managers with experience and a degree in business, you can’t get managerial experience working hard as a cashier and you probably can’t afford to do a degree in business if you’re working minimum wage and trying to support yourself (and potentially a family). The same goes for restaurant workers, franchise owners didn’t work their way to the top, they paid a few million to own a restaurant that they now make millions from.

If you want a minimum wage job that does offer opportunity for advancement you have to have money. These jobs require degrees and certification, vulnerable sector check ($50/6 months), CPR/First Aid ($400/3 years), NVCI ($1500), TB test, vaccinations, ASSIST, etc. If you are making minimum wage, which isn’t even enough to live on, how are you supposed to save up money for these things? And sure, there are student loans if you actually want to go to post-secondary, but they don’t offer loans for other types of certification, not to mention that you’re lucky if student loans cover all of your tuition and supply expenses. Student loans aren’t enough to pay for rent and utilities and food. I mean, who’s going to do better in school, the kid who has rich parents paying for all their expenses and only has to worry about getting straight A’s, or the student who has to also work a full time job while studying just so they have a place near campus to live and food to eat?

Bachelor’s degrees are also becoming irrelevant. Sure, companies require them, but they also require experience. Well the rich kid might have plenty of time to volunteer and get that experience but the poor student doesn’t have anymore hours in the day to dedicate to volunteering. So even if they both graduate with the same degrees and the same honours the student with a wealthy family is going to be getting the better jobs because they participated in extra curriculars and had time to work for free to get the required experience (and let’s face it, once upon a time people volunteered because they wanted to help and had some free time, now volunteering is a work and school requirement, that’s not volunteering, that’s being forced to work for free).

Going off of this volunteer thing, the person willing to work for the least amount of money is going to get the job and the experience which in turn will open doors to better jobs with better pay. Why would companies pay someone to do something when someone else is willing to do it for free? Why would companies hire someone who wants a living wage over someone willing to take minimum wage? Companies break up full time positions into several part time roles because part time employees don’t get benefits. Poor people can’t afford to work for less money than they can survive on whereas people from a richer upbringing can fall back on their family if they are strapped for cash. Questions like “What did you make at your previous company?” and “What is your expected salary?” shouldn’t be permitted, it allows companies to continuously lower employees’ salaries.

As a child you’re taught to believe that you can do anything if you work hard enough, it’s a nice dream, it keeps the populous hopeful and encourages them to work hard, but the truth of the matter is that if you don’t have money you aren’t going anywhere. It seems ridiculous that money is baring access to making money but that’s the way this society functions, you need money to get money. This could probably all be fixed if companies were forced to pay a living wage and teach their employees their jobs rather than asking them to spend their time and money to be trained elsewhere.

[suki-schiffer]

How to get a job with a psych BA?

I’ve been seeking help everywhere I can think of so I’ve decided to yell into the void that is Tumblr in the hopes that someone will hear and perhaps be able to help me.

I finished an honours BA in psychology back in August. I want to go to grad school but all the schools require work experience (exactly what counts as work experience and the amount of experience varies by program), problem is no one is asking for psych BA students and I’m not even hearing back from most of the postings that I feel I should be qualified for (e.g. they’ll ask for someone with a degree in a mental health or social development field).

Anyone on here have any advice for what kind of positions I should be looking/applying for? How does one get a start in the mental health field?

All recommendations and advice appreciated.

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“I want to die,” the ghost whispers.

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Tumblr why?

What did you do? What is this? Who asked for this? Why is it killing my eyes? Please stop.

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Can door-to-door sales people just stop?

I mean, in this day and age who’s going to open a door for a stranger? Who’s even going to check the peep-hole if a text wasn’t sent before/immediately after the knock? So stop giving me bloody heart attacks already because every time someone knocks at the door the kid in me goes “stranger danger!” and proceeds to assume it’s a serial killer out to get me. And then I spend the next ten minutes sitting in silence waiting for someone to try to break in.

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So I thought universities were profiting off students...

I, like most people, have complained about the cost of education and, in part due to the huge increase in the cost of a degree from 1980 to today, thought that universities/colleges were drastically inflating the price of a degree (i.e. that only ~30% of what students paid was covering the cost of equipment and paying professors the rest was going to the university’s top executives). But I got curious about it and decided to do a google search and it turns out that there was a recent report released regarding the average salary of professors at some of the major Canadian universities. My school was on there.

According to this report my full time professors were making ~$180000 a year. To be classified as a full time prof the professor must teach at least three courses each term and at least two terms a year (I say “at least” but I hadn’t heard of any that were teaching more than three). I then took some liberties assuming the number of students per class and placed it at 50, while my smallest class was only 32 I’ve had lectures with over 150 students and online classes (which count as one of the professor’s three per term) with over 300, so I think 50 is fair. I then calculated how much each student would have to pay to cover that professor’s salary and it came out to $600. That doesn’t seem too bad until you take into account that that’s only one professor and none of these students are being double counted (i.e. it’s making the assumption that no student has the same professor twice in the same year). Now, I don’t know about you, but in my 4.5 years as a student I only had five professors for more than one class (two of those professors were the entire Japanese department and I took 6 Japanese classes so...). Anyway, a full time student (like me) took 10 classes a year so assuming you never had a prof for more than one class you’re paying $6000 a year to cover your professors’ salaries.

I suppose that’s still $4000 extra unaccounted for but most of my professors had TAs to help them mark/monitor exams and I know that TAs started at $20/hr and were paid for 20 hours of work per week. Then there’s all the janitors, maintenance, gardeners to be paid. On-campus health-services, school provided tutors, IT department, subscriptions to scientific journals, librarians, all the library books. Then of course the equipment we used, whether it was just paper and a desk, a computer lab, or MRI machines. I know that $400 a year went towards “free” use of public transit, $100 to the student federation, $150 to the gym. I’ve come to the conclusion that they aren’t inflating the price to make a profit, with the way things are priced most of what we paid really was going towards the resources we used.

That being said:

$180000 a year!?! How do you even spend that much money? You could buy a new house, boat, and car every year and still have money left over!

But my university wasn’t a stand alone, there were other schools paying their professors comparable wages and I know that in this capitalist society if my school lowered salaries to $75000 (still about $25k above the Canadian average) the professors would go to other schools and if Canada took some kind of action that lowered the salaries of all professors most of them would probably go to the US or UK.

So in the end I’ve concluded that colleges and universities haven’t inflated the price of education just because they can or just because they’ve become greedy and want a larger profit. They’ve increased the price because their costs have increased and if they want to remain in business they need to make more money. To further accentuate my point, perhaps the professors are the greedy ones if $180k/yr is considered a competitive salary, but all my professors had doctorates, my BA cost $30k before factoring in the interest I’ll pay on my loans, and I know master’s/PhD’s cost even more; and then there’s the fact that when in school you’re also missing out on a decent salary often spending years working part time/minimum wage or having to rely on someone else to support you. The more you charge students the more people with PhDs/professors will need to be paid to make up for all the money they spent/didn’t make while in school, thus increasing professor salary and tuition costs and the cycle repeats.

But it’s outside factors driving this cycle, specifically your average capitalist greed, and I predict that the whole system is going to collapse soon due to recent trends in the job market. 

I’ve recently found that employers, in true capitalist fashion, are getting greedier and don’t want to waste time/money/resources training people, they also don’t want to waste time asking potential employees to demonstrate that they have the knowledge/skills for the job, they want paperwork (degrees, licenses) to show it. We will look beyond the fact that this is a horrible way to determine someone’s abilities (I have the highest academic honours but almost failed stats and neuroscience so while my degree makes me eligible to work in a neuroscience lab as an RA I would require a lot more training than what the employer probably considers ideal). Due to this desire for paperwork entirely new degrees have popped up over the last few years like bricklaying, welding, sewing, administration/reception and in general employers are passing over people with more skill in favour of those with degrees. Years ago you could cook a man a meal and become a chef, show someone your drawings and become and illustrator, fix a man’s computer and be hired as an IT tech. I no longer hear of people getting job offers based on someone seeing their work, the word of a friend, or by performing a task for someone (my grandmother got a job at a bank through simple demonstration of how fast she could calculate percentages and roll coin, my aunt got her job in a beauty boutique simply by walking in with her makeup done and demonstrating her knowledge of popular brands). So now all these employers require degrees and so everyone who can afford to pays to get the required degrees. But now there are too many people with degrees, people that might have never been considered for a job previously due to lack of talent are now being considered because they have a piece of paper that says they have the required knowledge (you can teach someone to draw but that doesn’t mean they are going to be amazing at it) meaning employers have the pick of the litter. They might choose older individuals who have experience or rich individuals who have connections and could therefore intern and get experience at mommy/daddy’s work place, and because there are so many people to choose from they can get away with paying their employees minimum wage. You don’t like it? Tough, you can be replaced with someone willing to take what they can get. But minimum wage isn’t living wage and isn’t enough for a single individual without debts to live on let alone individuals with degrees and the loans to match. So it’s not the universities and it’s not your professors it’s the employers, the top 1% again. The middle class is being abolished, the poor are becoming poorer, all the while that 1% profits off of all of us.

Education is becoming less attainable and the number of jobs you can get without a degree is also on the decline. It’s very possible that there won’t be enough minimum wage, no degree required, jobs to go around soon. On top of this the people are unhappy. No one can live on minimum wage and university grads do have the ability to think, they aren’t so easily transformed into mindless sheep, action will be taken, it’s just a matter of time.

But until then...

This has been a friendly rant from your neighbourhood recent-grad-still-trying-to-get-work-in-my-field-so-I-can-go-to-grad-school who’s drowning in loans, having an existential crisis, and wishes to change the system,

Good night!

[suki-schiffer]

Sometimes I think MS Word is drunk

Sometimes autocorrect is helpful other times you suddenly get “I told my arms across my chest” because obviously I didn’t mean to type fold, no, never fold. Told your arms. Told them tight.

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When I’m asked what capitalism is I could give a textbook answer but...

To me capitalism is being 15 years old and having to get to work for 3 when your last class ends at 2:35. It’s running up three flights of stairs, trying to stuff your bag with everything you need, running back down the stairs and then speed walking for 15 minutes in the snow. It’s knowing you’ll get in trouble if you punch in before you are in your uniform but there’s only 5 minutes until you are officially late and two other coworkers are a head of you for the bathroom and there’s no way you can all get changed in time.

It’s having anxiety about how you’re going to get to the bathroom because it’s a 5 hour shift and it’s the second day of your period and your uniform has no pockets and your belongings are literally in a closet with everyone else’s things, the same closet that serves as a break room and your male coworkers, male class mates, are. It’s later being told you can’t go to the bathroom until the rush is dealt with and that rush lasting two hours. It’s being told that you can’t even have a drink because it’s unsanitary to have a mug out where guests could see but not being allowed to step into the back until all the guests are served. It’s working five hours without a break, without food, meanwhile you haven’t eaten since 11 because you’ve come directly from school. It’s trying to fill up on tea or coffee because that’s the only thing they’ll give you for free and they won’t even let you buy a drink while you are working. It’s being given only 20 minutes, unpaid, when you do have a shift that exceeds 5 hours, to purchase, make, and eat your food, not to mention go to the bathroom. It’s being stuck an extra half hour in hell because the bus doesn’t come until 8:30 and your mother has taken your sister to piano practice, and you debate whether you should really spend money on food when you’ll be home in an hour and your mother’s saved dinner. It’s getting home at nine, eating dinner, showering the stench of fast food off you, and then trying to finish your calculus homework that’s due tomorrow. It’s finally getting to bed around 2 and knowing you have to get up in less than five hours.

It’s doing all of this for $9.75 an hour, so you might be able to afford a degree a few years from now. Just put in three years, around 17 hours a week, put it all in savings, spend nothing, and you’ll have enough (at least until expenses like textbooks get factored in). Meanwhile your boss lives in a mansion just 20 minutes away, has three luxury cars, doesn’t try to hide how rich they are. All the while your anxiety/depression has become so horrible that it has physically manifested as an autoimmune disorder.

It’s suffering all that. Working throughout uni, somehow still managing straight As, graduating, and being told that you’ll need another degree (or three) before you can get work that pays more than minimum wage. But hey, at least after all of that you might be able to work a job where you can sit down, wear your own clothes, and don’t have to ask for permission to use the washroom.

Capitalism was being told that if you work hard you’ll succeed, only to discover that money is more predictive of success than hard work and that while your job might be more important sounding than the one you held in high school you’re still getting paid the same, you just have more debt.

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The people who think Marxism would never work because no one would be a doctor if they received the same pay as a McDonalds employee are obviously the McDonalds employees. They are obviously only motivated by money, are lazy, and have no intrinsic motivation for their actual jobs. They are projecting their feelings onto society as a whole and would rather not consider a society where they are in a position they currently demean. Oh, and the people who think Marxism will never work because no one would be a doctor if they received the same pay as a McDonalds employee also have no grasp of Marxism because McDonalds is a capitalist invention and would never survive in a communist world.

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If you thought school related anxiety was bad wait until you experience “now what?” anxiety

Spoiler alert: it’s 10x worse and there are existential crises involved

At least in school I sort of knew what I was doing, syllabi were great, vague but great, now it’s like... be a productive member of society, I guess? Maybe find something other than academics to base your identity on or, you know, just not have an identity and suffer?

There is one skill I perfected from university that shall assist me though, procrastination! I’m going back to school the first chance I get and I’ll deal with this bs when I finish my PhD. Wonder if I can write my doctoral dissertation on adulting...

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In ‘murica living is a luxury and owning a gun is a right

The fact that I hear more people complaining about potentially having their guns taken away than about the lack of universal healthcare is disturbing.

Can you guys get your heads out of your assess long enough to look at other countries and realize that banning guns means fewer shootings and providing universal healthcare leads to better quality of life? Also you guys are being gypped medicine does not cost that much in the rest of the world.

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Apple ads be like...

*Gasp* What’s this? A new iphone? Yes it is! Yes it is!

Isn’t it shiny? Oooh... Ahhh... Look at the shiny! Look at the shiny!

Do you want the shiny? Yes you do! Yes you do!

Go buy the shiny!

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People should have to prove they are capable of voting before being allowed to vote

Your ballot includes a 20 item multiple choice test that anyone who has actually researched the candidates and their platforms can answer. If you don’t know whether a candidate is for or against something you really shouldn’t be voting.

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Information about gum graft

So I had a gingival (gum) graft done today and I have decided to makes this post in hopes that others will find it helpful. I found very little online about what the experience was like and it would have really calmed me down if I could have read about it beforehand. 

My situation:

Not everyone’s procedure will be the same. I had recession on one of my lower front teeth my dentist pointed this out to me right after I got my braces of and sent me to a periodontist (gum specialist) then. I found the woman very rude and having blood/injection/injury type phobia decided I was not going through with the graft and hoped that it just wouldn’t recede anymore.

Fast forward four years not only has the recession continued I am now experiencing pain (not sensitivity), some days it just feels weird some times it is tender and throbbing, decide that I need to get this graft done and start looking up periodontists (because I’m not going back to that rude bitch).

First piece of advice is to do your research, look for a periodontist who is well rated (esp for grafts). You do not have to commit after the consultation, do not let them make you feel like you have to, if you don’t like the individual find someone else. 

Price:

I saw a lot of people on the internet asking how much the procedure cost. For my one tooth it was 660$ (number$ denotes Canadian currency). I also had to pay 140$ for level 3 sedation (we will discuss sedation in a moment). Finally, it was 75$ for the initial consultation. Of course this will vary depending on how many teeth you have to get done, in how many sittings, and on individual office differences.

What a graft does and does not do:

If you are like me before the consultation I was under the impression that a gum graft would cover up the recession, the graft only prevents further recession by strengthening the remaining tissues and preventing it from thinning/receding. I was warned that sensitivity pain due to root exposure would not be corrected with a graft. Luckily I have not been having sensitivity and if you are there is a “cosmetic” procedure where they can pull a healthy gum back up over the root of the tooth (I don’t know what the name of it is). I was told that all other pain would stop after the procedure (and healing).

Sedation:

I can’t have blood work done without bursting out in tears so of course I needed to be sedated for this procedure. When I looked up this doctor online they only mentioned two types of sedation, oral and IV. During my consultation I was told there are five different levels (at this place at least).

Lvl 0: apparently the majority of people that have this procedure don’t need/get sedation of any kind, only localized anesthetic (numbing cream followed by injection into the gum and palate).

Lvl 1: The above + N2O (nitrous oxide/laughing gas) administered through a large tube that sort of fits over your nose.

Lvl 2: Weak pills in addition to the above

Lvl 3: Strong pills with lvl 0 and lvl 1. For me there were five pills in total, one was a Tylenol, two were anti-anxiety, two were the sedative. 

Lvl 4: IV sedative (apparently stronger than the pills) administered by an anesthesiologist. Originally I went in thinking I wanted the strongest level of sedation but then I found out the nurse only came once a week for a few hours (I imagine this is common as when alarmed I asked the previous perio, “Wait you want to do this to me while I’m CONSCIOUS!!!” I was told the had sedation appointments once a month). Since the day they did IV sedation happened to occur on the same day I have lecture and considering needles make me anxious I ended up opting not to have IV.  

Lvl 5: This is complete sedation, apparently for all the other levels while you might be quite out of it you are still conscious for this one you will be unconscious. This again involves an IV sedative administered by an anesthesiologist. They also need to stick a breathing tube down your throat if you are unconscious. 

IF YOU GET SEDATION YOU HAVE TO HAVE SOMEONE DRIVE YOU HOME! It isn’t a matter of just making sure you aren’t driving either, they won’t let you walk or bus.

I found out after the consultation (actually yesterday via voicemail reminding me of the appointment) that since I was getting sedation I could not eat or drink after midnight. Through my own research I can tell you that for N2O you cannot eat or drink two hours prior to its administration. Some other surgeons’ websites also stated not to eat/drink for 10 hours before, others said six hours. I imagine this no eating or drinking rule is to prevent vomiting and nausea but I did have to take the pills with water so I assume a few sips of water would not have had an adverse affect; however, since I do not know exactly what I took, or what you will take, best just follow whatever the doctor tells you. If I were doing it again during the consultation I would have asked if there I could eat or drink before the operation and if there were exceptions (e.g. is water okay?). 

Being anxious eating is one of the ways I get my body to calm down. Regularly I drink a fair bit of water but when I am anxious I become really dehydrated due to sweating and the speeding up of the digestive tract. I am also a person that has to eat breakfast in 20 minutes of waking up or my stomach will start to roil and I’ll feel nauseous and sometimes start dry heaving. In addition to all this I have medical conditions that require me to take medication (obviously with water and) with food at the same time everyday (so I do this when I get up) this dietary restriction messed up my medication schedule and I can tell you my joints are paying for it now. tl;dr if I had known I couldn’t eat or drink I probably would have chosen a sedation method that was less tedious.

The effects of lvl 3: So I had to arrive about 30 mins before the appointment to take the pills (apparently so that they are effective). After taking them I alternated between reading (to try to ease my anxiety) and pacing (to try to burn off anxious energy). Thirty minutes later the nurse comes out with a wheelchair and calls my name, I’m mid pace, I haven’t been looking at the time but it feels like only a few minutes have passed, it doesn’t feel like they have taken effect yet as I’m still shaking. I ask the nurse if I should feel anything she tells me she’ll take me to the room and I can lay down and I still have to have the gas so not to worry. Despite obviously being able to stand and walk fine she insists I sit in the chair, was very embarrassed when when my pant leg got caught in the foot rest and I tripped and fell into the thing almost knocking the poor nurse off her feet, this was definitely the most embarrassing thing that happened while I was “sedated”.  So if you are worried about spilling secrets, having no control over your body/mouth, and generally embarrassing yourself don’t worry I never felt like I had lost control. 

When we got to the room and I was in the chair they asked me to take my glasses off, I’m pretty blind so this was as good as putting a blindfold on me. They fitted me with the N2O tube, not really sure how it fit, there was no band around my head, it was a large ribbed tube and a black piece sat over my nose. The started the thing on what I assume was the low setting because when I asked the doctor when he came in if I should be feeling as aware as I was he said he could turn it up. I’m not sure if it was just the way this thing was structured or if there was a hole but even they noticed it was blowing gas into my left eye, the nurse moved it a bit and it wasn’t too bad but this continued throughout the procedure.

The procedure:

Rewinding a bit to after the nurse put the tube on me she applied numbing cream to my gum and palate. When the doctor came in he injected local anesthetic into my lower gum and the roof of my mouth where the tissue would be taken. The injection on the roof of my mouth was the most painful part of the whole procedure as after the prick it stung like hell for a good minute. About a minute later the doctor poked and prodded with something sharp to see if I could feel anything, the far side of my gum wasn’t completely numb so another injection. Tested again, numb, good to go. 

The reason I chose the office I did was because everyone was really nice. Unlike the dentist’s office these people knew that when they had sharp things in your mouth it isn’t smart to try to involve you in conversation. Instead the doctor and nurse had a conversation about the nurse’s weekend and something stupid her boyfriend got up too, the doctor only addressed me a few times asking me to open wider or angle my head. Since I was without glasses and laying more or less flat I saw next to none of the procedure, I only remember seeing some gauze and the thread as he was sewing me up (I was so numb I honestly can’t tell you if he was doing my palate or gum at that point). The sound of the N2O was loud enough that with the conversation and the noise outside I didn’t hear any scraping (that sound really sets me on edge at the dentist). Because the tube also covers your nose I didn’t smell blood/flesh either, another bonus. 

During the consultation I was told the procedure would be about 15 minutes, it felt like it was over much faster than that and the doctor must time himself or something because when he was finished and I told him that felt like under ten minutes he told me he had been in the room for 13 minutes and 20 seconds. Maybe the sedative took effect, but once he had started I was no longer afraid/anxious and like I said the whole thing flew by. After the procedure I did feel rather dizzy and accepted the wheelchair ride to the car without complaint so I’m assuming the medicine did have some effect (it might be worth noting though that I was so anxious I couldn’t sleep the night before and the night before that I was only able to sleep 3 hours so my lack of sleep may have amplified the effect). 

According to my mother, who was in the room with me, the doctor did not stitch the roof of my mouth only put a special plaster (band-aid) over it. After the doctor had left and the nurse was helping me get up and asking how I felt I noticed this thing and started gagging because of it, it felt like it was too far back and was triggering my gag reflex, she took a look and said it was the right size and secured properly. She also told me I only had to put up with it until it fell off which would likely be in no more than three days. 

The recovery (so far):

As mentioned above while in the office the plaster was setting off my gag reflex, quickly realized this only happened when I was talking or if I moved it around (this thing really felt like I had put a band aid in my mouth, it moved like fabric and I could even feel the quilted texture). The plaster has been the most unpleasant/painful thing thus far. 

After the procedure I was still starving and needed to have my morning meds, I had brought two muffins and my water and medication with me and ate/drank with no problem on the car ride home. Once home I was exhausted (I had barely slept in two days and might have still been feeling the effects of the sedative) I slept for five hours.  

The numbing had obviously worn off at this point and my mother was wondering how much pain I was in and if she should go to the store to get a blender and liquid foods so I could eat. Minus the plaster I felt fine, only a bit of tenderness around my tooth but I had experienced this before the procedure. During the consultation I was told solid foods were fine so long as they were soft and would not scratch the sites (they told me if I could squeeze it between my fingers and it mushed instead of broke it was okay to eat but a few people online said they could only have liquids because of the pain). To test out if I could eat solids or not I tried a few gummies (which was probably the only soft thing in the house) I had no problem chewing them with my molars and only had an issue when they touched/moved the plaster causing me to gag. 

My mom went out for food and I decided to take it easy, I studied a bit and watched tv, I got hungry but seeing as there was only hard foods (apples, cereal, kale, nuts, etc.) I made myself a tea. Other people complained that they had hot/cold sensitivity, hot tea was actually soothing. 

Once my mother was home I had a yogurt, again, perfectly fine. For dinner I had macaroni and cheese (from a box so no tough cheese or breadcrumbs), having not really had breakfast or lunch I managed a bowl and a half no problem. After dinner I realized that the plaster had likely fallen off and I had eaten it  (*facepalm* oops). There has been no bleeding and I feel much more relaxed without the plaster. 

This post has taken a lot longer to write than I anticipated and while I am a bit tired (likely due to lack of sleep) I still intend to do yoga later tonight. The only thing I have apprehension about is brushing my teeth before bed, I was told normal brushing is fine just not to brush the graft site. 

Other considerations:

From the limited information I could found online it seems like different doctors perform a gum graft differently and therefore there a different instructions. The first perio I went to said that they would have to make a retainer for me to that it covered the roof of my mouth so I didn’t tongue at the donor site. When I asked about it at this place they even admitted that was likely a money ploy as they would only use a plaster, stitches, or combination of the two depending on how much the area bled. 

In a youtube video from a British woman she said that she had been instructed to do salt water rinses whenever she ate, not to brush her teeth for a week and instead to gently swish some prescription liquid tooth paste. While I was offered prescription liquid tooth paste (I think it’s just fluoride) they told me it was a matter of preference and that so long as I didn’t brush the graft for a week I could do my regular dental routine. 

It sounded like some people had been prescribed special pain killers my doctor said to take Tylenol or Advil if there was any pain. I haven’t taken anything yet as nothing really hurts (it feels like my muscles are tender because I over did it at the gym, except in an odd spot, again I was feeling this tenderness before the appointment for a few weeks so it’s not something I feel I need pain killers for).

I know a lot of people on the internet ask about insurance that will all depend on your insurance company, even the periodontist office can’t tell you if the procedure will be covered and how much you will be reimbursed. 

I know the British woman mentioned previously said she had to get stitches out, personally that sounds horrible, when I asked my perio they assured me they used dissolvable stitches.

So far there has been no swelling.

At the previous perio I went to the woman said she would cut off the skin attaching my lower lip to my gums, this freaked me out and I didn’t understand why she had to do this and feared it would cause my lip to sag or minimize the control I had over my lower lip. This procedure is called a frenectomy and is necessary for grafts on the bottom front teeth to prevent lip movement from moving the graft/ripping the stitches (I originally thought it was an intense procedure in and of itself but they literally just make a single cut with the scalpel).

During the consultation I noticed that I found the building rather cold so I wore layers, putting on my jacket once we got to the office, I was already mentally uncomfortable, I didn’t want to add physical discomfort to that. I advise assessing the office on your first visit and dressing appropriately. 

Summary:

Price of graft: 800$ (including taxes and sedation)

Time from consultation to procedure:  15 days

Time procedure took: ~15 minutes (was at office for 45 minutes total)

Expected recovery time: 10 days (until I’m not supposed to feel anymore pain and can eat anything again)

Procedure prep: consultation, (apparently they need x-rays so you either get them there or have your dentist email them), no food/drink from midnight on before the graft

Post-op: only soft food (for ten days), don’t brush/poke/prod graft or donor site, follow up appointment in three weeks

Thing that caused the most anxiety: anticipating the procedure

Anxiety pre-procedure: 9/10 (I don’t like extremes but was tempted to rate this one a 10, I have never feared anything more in my life), anxiety during procedure: 4/10

Most painful thing during the procedure: local anesthesia to palate (burning sensation)

Most painful thing about recovery (thus far): gagging on the plaster

How much procedure has interfered with my day-to-day life (so far): 2/10

Overall pain: 1/10

Well that’s about everything I can think to cover thus far, will update later with how recovery proceeds. 

I hope that this post can help alleviate someone’s anxiety about this procedure, I know having this information would have made me felt a bit better and I know one of my co-workers is also supposed to get a graft and has be procrastinating because she too is terrified so I’m sure there are others out there that this can benefit.

On that note if I have missed something or you have any questions you want to ask my feel free to PM (DM? inbox? what do we even call it on this site?) me and I’ll try to answer your questions. 

UPDATE:

There was a plastic plaster under the cloth one that fell out the next morning when I was eating oatmeal, after it was gone the roof of my mouth felt as it had pre-surgery.

Most painful/difficult thing about recovery was washing my face and putting on makeup (because I had to touch my chin).

I quickly gave up on the soft food diet, I was eating pistachios three days after the surgery and binged on chips a week later. Realized early on that while hard foods were easy enough to manage I couldn’t bite food off with my front teeth so I couldn’t take sandwiches to class and had to eat pizza like an ostentatious person.

Turns out there was some kind of plaster over the graft site as well that was held in with dissolvable stitches except not all of them dissolved so it was hanging on by a thread and became very annoying to brush/eat/drink with. Doctor removed it at check up, seemed to be the cause of zombie mouth.

Zombie mouth. Seriously I was so self-conscious about how bad my breath smelt, I even woke myself up a few times. With the exception of the graft site I was brushing regularly and even using mouth wash but the smell did not abate until the plaster was removed.

Didn’t take any medication during the healing process, didn’t really have any pain unless I touched the area or tried to bite off food (and that was probably in my favour otherwise I might have gone something that ripped the stitches and caused the graft to fail).

I have one more post-op appointment in September but apparently everything is healing nicely and I’m allowed to eat normally and brush the area again.