Medical Professionals Keep Irradiating My Head!

[the_eggwhite]

Well, yesterday I spent a couple of hours at the dentists... Most of it spent either being X-Rayed or waiting for X-Rays to be developed and examined. The dentist then softened down some of the sharp edges and applied a temporary covering to stop things getting worse. I need to go back to get a proper white filling put in to fix it up nicely... and I'll be doing that early in December.

He also spotted another place where one of my old fillings had fallen out, and so the hole has gotten worse as well. So I need to get that done too. Irritatingly, it's on the other side of my mouth, so it has to be a separate trip (they don't freeze both sides at the same time, as having a vaguely functioning mouth is kind of useful). So when I've had filling #1 done, I need to arrange another appointment for filling #2. In the meantime, one of my teeth looks like it has been patched up with polyfilla.

The main upshot of all of this is that it looks like the medical profession is determined to irradiate my head. I had a CT scan of my sinuses a couple of months back, and now I've had three x-rays of my teeth done as well.

Comments

[majic13.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're hoping that your head will gain superpowers or something. :o

[urizen.livejournal.com]

Possibly the amazing ability to glow in the dark?

[majic13.livejournal.com]

Or the power to magically loose all its hair. And teeth. And skin. o_O

[urizen.livejournal.com]

That sounds more like a WFRP mutation to me...

[duana.livejournal.com]

Useful that, you don't need a bedside light to read in bed!

Comiserations

[eharris.livejournal.com]

All sounds a bit painful.

*Pedant alert*

"so the hole has gotten worse as well"

What's with the use of gotten? An entertaining piece of 17th century English, but hardly current. I know American English branched from UK English at around that point, but there's no point in bringing it back in to our language, when we have a number of perfectly good constructions that can replace it.

Re: Comiserations

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

I use it in casual speech, which is the approach I take to grammar around here... This isn't me writing properly, but me spouting assorted drivel at a bunch of folks I know and a few I don't.

[Editor hat goes on]

As for the use of the word "Gotten", the nuance around it is a bit different to most of the constructions available... some examples:

"...and so the hole has become worse as well"
- Become often implies intent or an active process, indicating that rather than something simply happening, it was something that occurred through deliberate thought, plan or action. This isn't a nuance that stands up to rigourous checking via definitions and the like, but it's something that I tend to notice in the common usage of the word. I don't generally avoid it, but tonally it didn't really fit in with the voice I was using for the entry.

"...and so the hole worsened"
- Reads as if either stilted and academic, or clinical and blunt. more to do with the way the sentence scans and works in my brain than anything else, but again, it doesn't really fit with the voice I post in here.

"...and so the hole has got worse as well"
- Thi is technically not actually correct. Gotten has a temporal component, as well as a possesive one. By this I mean that "Got" implies posession of a state or object, whereas "Gotten" implies transition into posession of that state or object. In my usage here, the transition into becoming worse is dependant on the moment of the filling ocming out, so gotten is actually more correct. If I removed the "has" then it would be correct, but it loses the significance of the moment of transition.

As for "gotten", it's most definately not wrong - it just fell from common usage in the predominant regional dialect. Since we're now seeing a resurgence of other regional dialects as well (something I welcome as I like rich language, and the ability for words to have meaning beyond their definition), you're likely to see reappearances of words. Usually words that never actually fell from use completely - just words that fell out of use in BBC english.

As long as we can avoid widespread use of monstrosities such as are found within the "Varest" dialect (as opposed to seeing them used for flavour and mood, which I love), I'll be happy. If I start seeing "Her to have been doing" or "Her went out with he" in common usage, my brain may cave in.