So I've been neglecting the blog (and life for that matter) lately on account of a recent dental disaster. One of my top left molars started hurting last Wednesday after I chewed a piece of Orbit gum (I know for a fact that my abuse of soda pop was the real culprit, but I just thought it was ironic that the actual toothache was activated by tooth friendly gum). It's happened before, and I normally just took an Aleve, went to sleep and the pain went away; this time was no different. The pain went away, and everything seemed okay until Thursday night when I covered closing for my friend Johnny. The left side of my face started to swell up, there was no pain, just swelling. At this point, I knew something bad was coming. We close up, I drive to my grandpa's house to stay the night as I do every Thursday, and take a Tylenol to decrease the inflammation. Tylenol is acetaminophen, acetaminophen is a stomach irritant and can cause nausea if taken on an empty stomach, which is exactly what I did. I wake up around 6am and puke my brains out, not begrudging my body for doing what it's designed to do, but kicking myself for not taking the necessary measures to prevent it. My tooth is killing me, and the swelling has gotten so bad it looks like I have a cue ball in my mouth. I manage to fall asleep for a couple more hours. 10am, just about, I wake up and pain persists, I decide I have to do something. First of all, I can't work tonight, I'll be a wreck, especially with the assholes I have to serve, and I figured the best way to be let off the hook is to just go in and show them what's wrong. Plus my drawer was $20 short the night before because of some oblivious pothead, so I had to go in and drop off $20 of my own money anyways to make it up. I was a mess. I was panicked and exhausted, and the bulbous mass on my face made me look like I'd been stricken with bubonic plague. Long story short, they gave me the night off. I return to my grandpa's house, he'd gotten a hold of my mom and told her what had transpired in the last couple of hours, she tells me to return home straight away. We need to find a dentist, this tooth needs to come out, like now. My face was like a champagne bottle, and my tooth was the cork; I was in desperate need of a cause for celebration at this point. That was a shit metaphor. Anyways. My mom shrieks in panic when she sees my face, and begins calling every dentist in the book. She first tries these so-called "emergency dentists", who supposedly operate like general medical urgent care facilities. However they were all closed. I know, I considered throwing bricks through their window too. If there's one thing my mom will not stand for, it is seeing her children in pain. She's had it, so she instructs me to get my coat; We're going on a dentist hunt. After a lot of driving around, we end up at a dentist office right down the street from us, AND they accept our insurance. They take x-rays of ground zero, and inform me that one of my top left molars is abscessed; which means that the nerve is infected. I have two choices: Save the tooth by root canal or extraction. I choose extraction because: 1. Root canals suck 2. Root canals are incredibly expensive on our insurance, and 3. Root canals suck. At this point my tooth has caused me so much pain and misery that I'd rather just ditch the fucker and move on. No more problem. I have like what? 26? 25 others left? I can spare ONE molar.
He gave me Vicodin (which I killed within a week, by the way. At 500mg each at I think 3 or 4 times a day, I have a fantastic liver), and my tooth is coming out this Friday. And he has a drawer full of anesthetic.
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