I had dental surgery last Friday. I had to take the day out of work, and then I
did what any normal person would do. Oh,
wait. No, I didn't -- I didn't rest. That's right, I ran to the pharmacy, I ran to
the grocery store, I made pudding, I ate yogurt, I took the penicillin and the
super-Motrin. I went to my daughter's
house. I baked cookies for the lacrosse
game. That was Friday after the surgery.
Saturday I went to the lacrosse game (it was freezing, by
the way). I delivered the cookies to the
lacrosse team. I spent all day Sunday
working on my thesis and "resting."
Monday I was back at work, and Tuesday I am back at work proctoring the
state long composition test.
Yup, to me this is resting.
I don't climb any mountains; I don't ford any streams; I don't follow
any rainbows; I don't find any hills that are alive. Therefore, I must be "resting."
What I do find Tuesday afternoon is that the meds are not
really doing their job. Tuesday is the
first day I can actually open my mouth enough to eat applesauce and cottage
cheese and really soft pumpkin bread with other humans without totally grossing
them out with the way I semi-chew as we sit in the teachers' lunchroom. Linda, who has been down the tooth-route
before, asks me how I'm feeling. She knows.
She knows how bad this can get. When
I tell her it still hurts, and hurts a lot, she urges me to go back to the oral
surgeon.
I make it through the day and realize as I pull into my
driveway that my jaw feels funny. It
feels … chilly. I can't describe it, but
it's like there is pain in the jaw and cold air shooting out of my front
teeth. I have a reasonably high
tolerance for pain, so I figure the situation is probably worse than I'm
letting on.
I remember after my wisdom teeth, which were impacted
completely into my jaw bone and growing in the wrong direction, I developed dry
sockets. That oral surgeon yelled at me
because I didn't come to his office as soon as I felt the pain. Honestly,
guy, the pain was no better nor worse than the usual wisdom teeth stuff. How am I supposed to know? We are also a family that tends to have
painless ear infections, too. Took a
load of crap from pediatricians and my own physician over the years on that
one, but that's a story for another day.
Where was I? So, I am
still sitting in the driveway when I reach into the glovebox and retrieve the
flashlight. I open my mouth as wide as I
can, because remember today I can open my mouth without drool and blood and
food oozing out, shine the light right on that sucker and ..
Holytoothfairy, I can
see the goddamn roots of the next tooth.
I can frigging see my entire tooth from that hole in my jaw.
Now, this does not make me feel confident. I have had gum and tooth problems all of my
life, and I struggle to save each and every bit of my jaw and its
contents. I remember my wisdom teeth
experience, and I recall the oral surgeon on Friday saying to me, "Oh, I
see you have another hole in your jaw.
That must be for leftovers."
I immediately call the surgeon's office and am told he will call me
back. At 4:35, more than an hour later, I
still have not heard back, and the office closes at 5:00 -- not the office near
my house; the one in the city of Lawrence several miles and a shitload of
traffic away.
"Can you be here in ten minutes?" the nurse asks.
"No, but I can be there in twenty," I assure
her. And then I race like Richard Petty
(cut me some slack - we're both old here) through the charming streets of
Lawrence, driving right around an accident, running a light, and barely moving
over for an ambulance. When I get to the
office at 4:53, there are still four patients in front of me.
Shit. Not only are they running late, now the
emergency patient (me) is going to make them run later. They're going to hate me… more than they
already do..
I finally get in there, and the doctor has to irrigate the
area. There was a clot there, but it's
gone. I have a dry socket, but a new
clot has formed and it's starting to heal itself. He's going to pack it. For anyone unfamiliar with this process, it's
basically a small cloth soaked in some kind of extreme clove oil and shoved
unceremoniously and quite forceably into the hole in one's jaw. It tastes like clove gum on steroids.
My late emergency causes the surgeon to miss his meeting
with another doctor in the building, and he tells me has to go by the hospital
to see a patient, anyway. His nurse has
to clear up yet another room (sorry) because of me. The janitor comes in the room, starts
cleaning, and jumps nearly out of his skin when I speak to him because he doesn't
notice nor expect me to be there.
Finally I get up to leave the office. All is good, life is good, my jaw is feeling
better, and everyone can finally lock up and get out of there. The oral surgeon reaches into the office
refrigerator (they give ice cream and a little cooler to all of their wisdom
teeth patients), and pulls out a bunch of frozen Kit-Kat bars. He smiles and holds one in my direction.
"Do you want one?" he says to me. "But you can't eat it for an hour. Nothing to eat or drink for an hour
now."
I am figuring after all the trouble I've given him, the last
thing I should be doing is adding more sugar into my dental work. "No thanks," I answer. "I'm trying to cut down."
He zips up his fleece jacket to leave right on my heels. "I know I should stop," the oral
surgeon smirks, "but my dentist loves me."
