I’ll have a lortab with a whiskey chaser, please.
So, the blog is a mess.
~sigh~
I’ve been pretty busy and haven’t blogged about any of the things I’ve been doing.. like the meat class I took at the CIA, the Bacon Class I just took at the FSC Academy and my very first From Scratch Club Swap!
I’ve also been waging a war against slugs in my garden, I harvested my very first zucchini (whee!) and made chive blossom vinegar.
oh and!
I have been slowly conquering my fear of the dentist because I have to.
About two weeks ago, my temple started aching and I figured, well.. it’s the heat.. or it’s my sinuses..
until a Monday when I was reeling. I mean that literally. I got up out of bed Monday morning and almost fell over with dizziness and a throbbing pain in my jaw.
not good.
So of course, I tried to ignore it. I convinced myself it was nothing.. it was my sinuses.. it’ll be fine.. blah blah blah.
by Monday afternoon, I knew it wasn’t my sinuses. I was in a hella lot of pain but .. see.. I’ve had twinges before and I knew I had a bad tooth.. so I was crossing my fingers that it would just stop.. it’s stopped before so… I gambled.
I lost.
Actually, I got my ass whooped by a tiny little tooth.
Never ever in my life have I ever felt pain like this. The only thing that would alleviate the pain was cold water in my mouth. I drank so much water that I was up and in the bathroom every 20 minutes.. and just those few moments away from my glass of water was excrutiating.
As you can imagine, sleeping was difficult. I was having such a hard time that LB said “do you want to go to the Emergency room?”. I was like, why? so they can give me a narcotic that will keep me up all night? (yep.. you read that right.. narcotics keep me awake.. ask me about the time I got the swine flu and I paid almost $100 for cough syrup with codeine that I just poured down the drain because it didn’t touch my cough and as a bonus kept me up all. damn. night)
So…
I got myself a pillow, a dishtowel, a giant bottle of ice water and grabbed some couch.
This was my night.
- take big sip of cold water. hold in mouth
- lay down on side with dishtowel under cheek
- close eyes and doze until water dribbles out of mouth
- wake up, whimper
- repeat until 6AM
I got about 3 hours of sleep.. tops.. when I got up, I felt better.. Yay! I walked the dogs.. YAY! by the end of our walk, I was a little achy but not bad.. I thought whew! it’s over.
I got in the shower. 5 minutes later, I was weeping in agony. Then, in a moment of desperation, I turned the water to cold and filled my mouth with cold cold water while I stood there, shivered and tried not to scream.
I think I got the soap out of my hair. Maybe.
Yeah, I called the dentist and between sips of water, I got an appointment that morning. Thank the gods.
Long story short (too late!) I need a root canal and a wisdom tooth extraction. And I left with a script for penicillin and lortabs. And even though I haven’t touched the lortabs and I very rarely drink, if I had them in my possession that horrible horrible night, I would have gladly downed a lortab with a whiskey chaser.
I have gotten really lucky with this dentist. I had to go back today as I evidently had some live tissue left that was getting cranky but although my shoulders were up around my ears with tension, I wasn’t hyperventilating.. I wasn’t crying (which has happened at the dentist before)… and I was laughing and chatting when I was done.
I might have kicked this fear.. all it took was one night of agony and a great dentist with a wicked sense of humor, sure and steady hands and buckets of patience.