I’ll have a lortab with a whiskey chaser, please.

On By Pirate Jeni

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.

  1. take big sip of cold water. hold in mouth
  2. lay down on side with dishtowel under cheek
  3. close eyes and doze until water dribbles out of mouth
  4. wake up, whimper
  5. 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.