I R Back

I am back, and in more ways than one!

For about the last month (give or take a week) I've been dealing with tooth pain. It started out as a dull ache that came and went, and I was content to let it do its thing. Yes, I know that tooth pain, unlike wine, does not improve with age, but I don't like going to the dentist and am prepared to pay up in the form of intermittent discomfort if that's the price of avoiding the Masked One's malign clutches. But the last week was murder. You know your teeth hurt when you sweat profusely even when you're sitting still. It got so bad I couldn't sit or lie down, so I wandered around the house night after night, unable to sleep or eat, gobbling Tylenol like M&Ms and working my way down that dreaded decision tree that leads, in the end, to the dentist's office.

I was at work Friday morning and simply couldn't take it any more - I had reached the point where I was starting to stab my fingers with pieces of wire in a despairing attempt to divert attention from my teeth. The worst part was that they all hurt, every last one of them, and I had nightmare visions of the dentist telling me "Right, you need 28 root canals." But by Friday noon I was ready for 28 root canals. I left work and drove to an emergency dental place that I remembered from the old days, and presently was told that both of my upper wisdom teeth had to come out.

There's something about the phrase "We need to pull your wisdom teeth" that makes one's blood run cold. And as I was there by myself, gas and sedatives weren't options. So with a strong feeling of impending doom I initialed the form that said "I agree to waive general anesthesia." So the guy shot me up, two shots on each side, let me sit and stew for about ten minutes, and then came in with the Vise-Grips. I would characterize his style as decisive and forceful, but mercifully swift. The left one came out hard, and with a sound as of someone breaking an entire head of celery inside my head. It also came out in pieces; he went in at least three times. The right one came out easier; it sounded more like a wet branch being slowly bent to the breaking point instead of celery being snapped. I think it came out in two pieces, but I'm not sure; by then I wasn't in full command of my faculties.

I found this all to be a fairly intense experience. I like to think I'm reasonably tough, but having my teeth being ripped out, and having to listen to it, left me sweating and trembling. I had to sit there for about ten minutes to regain my wits. It was a pity I'd left my iPod at work (I'm bad at leaving my iPod on my desk, a habit that I will one day rue). I think listening to "Dark Transmission" by Vader at maximum volume would have been a mercy, whatever one things of Polish death metal (and though I can't speak for Polish metal as a whole, I have to say that Vader is cracking good).

And then the story gets weird. You'd think that having wisdom teeth broken out of your skull would hurt like hell once the anesthetic wears off, but they didn't. My gums were a little tender and didn't like being prodded, but I didn't even need Tylenol, let alone the Vicodin prescription they gave me. I hung around work for a while, then went to my brother's house and played Heroscape till about ten, and really didn't have any pain at all. The next morning I woke up with no pain. As I write this it's about 36 hours since they were pulled out, and the only thing I feel is a vague discomfort in my gums that is about the same as the discomfort produced by eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal.

Well, that's my week. A week of intense and unrelenting agony, followed by such a blessed release from pain I almost felt like signing up to run in a marathon. Almost. Let's not get carried away.