I'm A Bad Drug Addict

Meaning I'm not good at it. I don't enjoy it. Narcotic drugs and I, we aren't friends. Sure, there have been some in my life that gave me a mellow high and a ton of really deep sleep. These have been few and far between. Mostly drugs of the narcotic sort have to be saved for pain so bad that I am willing to endure the night terrors, the crying jags, the overwhelming feeling of everything in my life being wrong and bad. Then there is the itching, the need to claw through my skin until I can see daylight on on the other side can be incredible.

I finally stepped my pain pills down, and they took the pain's edge away. Yesterday the pain was a bit like an ice pick being repeatedly jabbed into the socket where once there was a tooth. Today it's more like a butter knife. Still unpleasant but not as jabbing, more like "hey why are you poking me with that butter knife?" sort of thing.

I feel like I have some sort of mortification of the tooth socket going on. It's going to be sin free when this is all over, I tell you.

I have to get my shit together today, I have to shower, for one, and sort of NOT LAY DOWN ALL DAY. I feel like this would be a positive. The down side is I'm still really weak, I feel like I was really physically taxed, I'm just tired and dizzy and weak. I'm hoping that if I only take ibuprofen today that it will fade, surely it's just the narcotic.

My kids have been very sweet taking care of me, when they haven't been annoying by not being quiet when I so desperately needed it.

Julia especially has been drawing me special pictures to make me feel better, and has been giving me check ups regularly with her doctor kit. She tells me I have tooth-hurty-itis which seems correct. Her prescription is usually for me to nap, which I've fully supported honestly.

Today the twins are supposed to have soccer but it rained like a bitch yesterday and I'm just not feeling like standing around in a mud bog watching a bunch of special needs kids play soccer. That probably makes me a bad person, but honestly, I don't think I can do it today. I probably can't do anything much but I am considering trying not to nap and calling it an achievement.

Or maybe no nap before noon....my will is fading.
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I'm A Bad Drug Addict

Meaning I'm not good at it. I don't enjoy it. Narcotic drugs and I, we aren't friends. Sure, there have been some in my life that gave me a mellow high and a ton of really deep sleep. These have been few and far between. Mostly drugs of the narcotic sort have to be saved for pain so bad that I am willing to endure the night terrors, the crying jags, the overwhelming feeling of everything in my life being wrong and bad. Then there is the itching, the need to claw through my skin until I can see daylight on on the other side can be incredible.

I finally stepped my pain pills down, and they took the pain's edge away. Yesterday the pain was a bit like an ice pick being repeatedly jabbed into the socket where once there was a tooth. Today it's more like a butter knife. Still unpleasant but not as jabbing, more like "hey why are you poking me with that butter knife?" sort of thing.

I feel like I have some sort of mortification of the tooth socket going on. It's going to be sin free when this is all over, I tell you.

I have to get my shit together today, I have to shower, for one, and sort of NOT LAY DOWN ALL DAY. I feel like this would be a positive. The down side is I'm still really weak, I feel like I was really physically taxed, I'm just tired and dizzy and weak. I'm hoping that if I only take ibuprofen today that it will fade, surely it's just the narcotic.

My kids have been very sweet taking care of me, when they haven't been annoying by not being quiet when I so desperately needed it.

Julia especially has been drawing me special pictures to make me feel better, and has been giving me check ups regularly with her doctor kit. She tells me I have tooth-hurty-itis which seems correct. Her prescription is usually for me to nap, which I've fully supported honestly.

Today the twins are supposed to have soccer but it rained like a bitch yesterday and I'm just not feeling like standing around in a mud bog watching a bunch of special needs kids play soccer. That probably makes me a bad person, but honestly, I don't think I can do it today. I probably can't do anything much but I am considering trying not to nap and calling it an achievement.

Or maybe no nap before noon....my will is fading.
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The Much Needed Oral Surgery

I have to say that the science of dentistry isn't what it was even ten years ago. Things are so much better and different it's amazing. I got a root canal and a crown ten years ago and some time between now and then I got an infection in the root. I never really felt it, but it showed up on my x-ray and my dentist told me last year that it HAD to come out. It was apparently degrading the bone. Well, turns out over his past year, I could TELL that the tissue under the tooth was soft and things weren't as they should be so this year I decided it had to be done.

It wasn't that bad. I got the gas and this time they increased it more after I told them that last time I felt like I was in the grips of a total panic attack in a place with 10X the gravity of earth, which was undesirable. They gave me a bit more and I admit, I did feel more relaxed. Not the "loopy" you see on TV but just calm.

After they turned my jaw to stone with the little torture pinches of numbing, they put a big old rubber thing on one side of my mouth mouth between my teeth and he went to work.

Oddly, it was pretty fast. Previously upon extraction there was yanking and pulling and an epic use of force that was pretty painful even when numb. This guy said that he felt like if he used a little finesse I'd stay comfortable and he did just that. He actually gently rocked and wigged the tooth, then pulled, then repeated. I knew it was going well when he said "AHHH I GOT IT" and right about that time a terrible smell washed over me.

I'd describe it as burning death. I don't know what else to call it. He'd gone to work in my mouth doing something I couldn't define, then I realized he'd gotten the crown off and was getting the tooth. He mumbled about infection, ah that's the smell, and asked if I was still ok. I said I was, or sort of gurgled that I was as I couldn't move my mouth because of the block in my right teeth.

At this point he says, "I'm going to go in and cut out this infection, raise your hand if you feel anything" and goes into my mouth with what looks like scissors and a scythe, a tiny tiny scythe.

The sound was the worst. Crunching, bonking into bone, bonk bonk bonk that resonated into my head. Eventually it started to feel like he was dislodging my jaw, as he kept mumbling about cleaning, and needing this or that. Then they squirt some blue stuff at it and say "ok we got it" and take the block out from between my teeth and we're "done".

The dental assistant told Scott I needed a frosty, ha, and it sounded like a good idea. However, eating a frosty while you have a mouth with huge gauze filling with blood is less than ideal. In fact, it's not actually pleasant. The gauze gets soaked with both frosty and blood because you can't control your numb head.

The pain crept up slowly and stealthily like they said it would and settled into a roar from my jaw to the center of my head. I have two kinds of meds for pain and I'm employing them both.

Mostly I feel exhausted and tired, I'd say it's from the drugs (maybe) but I also feel like the mental stress of the whole thing was really taxing.

I asked them to let me see the tooth, the root broke as he pulled it out, but just into two pieces which pulled out fine, it didn't actually look bad. What did was the gobs of infection he pulled out which he also showed me, and omg what a horror show that this was IN my mouth. I just feel disgusting, how can that nasty mess have been inside me and I didn't realize it. I told my husband maybe I won't have horrible morning breath now, but he seems to think this wasn't it as it was contained.

A girl can dream.

I'm glad it's over.

Next up, a couple of root canals. Yippee yi yay yay.
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The Much Needed Oral Surgery

I have to say that the science of dentistry isn't what it was even ten years ago. Things are so much better and different it's amazing. I got a root canal and a crown ten years ago and some time between now and then I got an infection in the root. I never really felt it, but it showed up on my x-ray and my dentist told me last year that it HAD to come out. It was apparently degrading the bone. Well, turns out over his past year, I could TELL that the tissue under the tooth was soft and things weren't as they should be so this year I decided it had to be done.

It wasn't that bad. I got the gas and this time they increased it more after I told them that last time I felt like I was in the grips of a total panic attack in a place with 10X the gravity of earth, which was undesirable. They gave me a bit more and I admit, I did feel more relaxed. Not the "loopy" you see on TV but just calm.

After they turned my jaw to stone with the little torture pinches of numbing, they put a big old rubber thing on one side of my mouth mouth between my teeth and he went to work.

Oddly, it was pretty fast. Previously upon extraction there was yanking and pulling and an epic use of force that was pretty painful even when numb. This guy said that he felt like if he used a little finesse I'd stay comfortable and he did just that. He actually gently rocked and wigged the tooth, then pulled, then repeated. I knew it was going well when he said "AHHH I GOT IT" and right about that time a terrible smell washed over me.

I'd describe it as burning death. I don't know what else to call it. He'd gone to work in my mouth doing something I couldn't define, then I realized he'd gotten the crown off and was getting the tooth. He mumbled about infection, ah that's the smell, and asked if I was still ok. I said I was, or sort of gurgled that I was as I couldn't move my mouth because of the block in my right teeth.

At this point he says, "I'm going to go in and cut out this infection, raise your hand if you feel anything" and goes into my mouth with what looks like scissors and a scythe, a tiny tiny scythe.

The sound was the worst. Crunching, bonking into bone, bonk bonk bonk that resonated into my head. Eventually it started to feel like he was dislodging my jaw, as he kept mumbling about cleaning, and needing this or that. Then they squirt some blue stuff at it and say "ok we got it" and take the block out from between my teeth and we're "done".

The dental assistant told Scott I needed a frosty, ha, and it sounded like a good idea. However, eating a frosty while you have a mouth with huge gauze filling with blood is less than ideal. In fact, it's not actually pleasant. The gauze gets soaked with both frosty and blood because you can't control your numb head.

The pain crept up slowly and stealthily like they said it would and settled into a roar from my jaw to the center of my head. I have two kinds of meds for pain and I'm employing them both.

Mostly I feel exhausted and tired, I'd say it's from the drugs (maybe) but I also feel like the mental stress of the whole thing was really taxing.

I asked them to let me see the tooth, the root broke as he pulled it out, but just into two pieces which pulled out fine, it didn't actually look bad. What did was the gobs of infection he pulled out which he also showed me, and omg what a horror show that this was IN my mouth. I just feel disgusting, how can that nasty mess have been inside me and I didn't realize it. I told my husband maybe I won't have horrible morning breath now, but he seems to think this wasn't it as it was contained.

A girl can dream.

I'm glad it's over.

Next up, a couple of root canals. Yippee yi yay yay.
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Oral Surgery For The Win

46 almost 47 years ago two people had a baby. She was a colicky baby. She screamed and screamed and screamed at night. Sometimes they would get in the car and her father would drive around in his 57 Chevy, because the sound of the engine would soothe her to sleep. Of course, they weren't getting any sleep, but at least the screaming would stop.

Her mother would sit with her baby in her stroller, throughout the long nights, and gently rock the stroller back and forth with her foot, while playing solitaire, hoping the baby would fall asleep. Sometimes it would work. The father would stop by these late nights from his night job as a cabbie and bring egg rolls to her mother, a token payment for dark circles and exhaustion.

At some point, the baby decided she'd sleep if she had a bottle. By this I mean not that she would take a bottle and fall asleep after consuming it, but that if she was laying down with a bottle in her mouth and drinking on it, she'd fall asleep. This was a great solution for a baby who would not be comforted and for parents who desperately needed this child to sleep.

Until she grew her teeth.

Her teeth you see had been rotted by the pooling of milk that her mouth held at night from this bottle. Her baby teeth shattered and broke off. Her father had to hold her in the dentist chair and pieces of her broken teeth were removed. It was unpleasant. Her irrational and incredible fear of dentists was probably set in motion during those visits.

That baby is me.

Hard to believe I was a difficult baby I KNOW, but I apparently was. And it's no one's fault because who knew back then? Science wasn't what it is now. Hell my mother's baby book for me says that you shouldn't drink when pregnant because it's just too many calories and you don't want to put on weight and be unattractive. TIMES WERE DIFFERENT.

46 years later I'm still dealing with this crap though. I've had so many root canals. And now one of them has "gone bad". I went to the endodontist to see if they could "retreat" the root canal. NOPE. So my next option is? ORAL SURGEON.

I met a very nice man today who told me that if it all goes well, it'll be $184 dollars and they'll just pull the whole thing out. If it goes poorly, the root will shatter and they'll have to cut into my gum and stuff to get out the bits. Also, the tooth behind it had a root canal and they are SO closely packed together he's concerned pulling this one could shatter or knock that one loose - so loose that it has to come out.

I'm expecting the worst.

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Oral Surgery For The Win

46 almost 47 years ago two people had a baby. She was a colicky baby. She screamed and screamed and screamed at night. Sometimes they would get in the car and her father would drive around in his 57 Chevy, because the sound of the engine would soothe her to sleep. Of course, they weren't getting any sleep, but at least the screaming would stop.

Her mother would sit with her baby in her stroller, throughout the long nights, and gently rock the stroller back and forth with her foot, while playing solitaire, hoping the baby would fall asleep. Sometimes it would work. The father would stop by these late nights from his night job as a cabbie and bring egg rolls to her mother, a token payment for dark circles and exhaustion.

At some point, the baby decided she'd sleep if she had a bottle. By this I mean not that she would take a bottle and fall asleep after consuming it, but that if she was laying down with a bottle in her mouth and drinking on it, she'd fall asleep. This was a great solution for a baby who would not be comforted and for parents who desperately needed this child to sleep.

Until she grew her teeth.

Her teeth you see had been rotted by the pooling of milk that her mouth held at night from this bottle. Her baby teeth shattered and broke off. Her father had to hold her in the dentist chair and pieces of her broken teeth were removed. It was unpleasant. Her irrational and incredible fear of dentists was probably set in motion during those visits.

That baby is me.

Hard to believe I was a difficult baby I KNOW, but I apparently was. And it's no one's fault because who knew back then? Science wasn't what it is now. Hell my mother's baby book for me says that you shouldn't drink when pregnant because it's just too many calories and you don't want to put on weight and be unattractive. TIMES WERE DIFFERENT.

46 years later I'm still dealing with this crap though. I've had so many root canals. And now one of them has "gone bad". I went to the endodontist to see if they could "retreat" the root canal. NOPE. So my next option is? ORAL SURGEON.

I met a very nice man today who told me that if it all goes well, it'll be $184 dollars and they'll just pull the whole thing out. If it goes poorly, the root will shatter and they'll have to cut into my gum and stuff to get out the bits. Also, the tooth behind it had a root canal and they are SO closely packed together he's concerned pulling this one could shatter or knock that one loose - so loose that it has to come out.

I'm expecting the worst.

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More Root Canals Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I have now had five root canals in my life. One I've had repeated. So let's call that six. That seems like a lot to me.

My first root canal was almost 20 years ago. It was so unpleasant and torturous that I wouldn't let them crown it. It still is filled with the temporary they put on it back then. It hasn't given me ANY trouble since then and honestly I don't give a fig. It can stay like this.

Since then I've had other, better experiences. Clearly the technology has changed, and I've probably gotten better dentists over the years. I had two yesterday, and two crowns. Lately I've been so full of anxiety over anything medical ESPECIALLY the dentist, I decided to try this gas everyone talks about. People will say OH GET THE GAS ITS GREAT.

The gas is a lie.

Here is what I wanted. I wanted to feel calm. MENTALLY. I knew the gas didn't do pain management, but I wanted to not be freaking terrorized as they jabbed again and again trying to get me numb enough to drill. Did I mention I'm hard to get numb enough? I wanted to not be so freaking scared of the drilling that my heart nearly leaped out of my chest. I wanted not to feel like I was going to DIE in the chair.

Here is what I got. First of all it felt like nothing. No difference. Mentally, I felt like, NO CHANGE. No difference in the level of fear or worry or anxiety. I was still clawing at the walls of my mental cell. I did notice though that my heart wasn't trying escape through my throat. Small improvement. I wasn't clawing up my own hands, also improvement. But I didn't FEEL better. I wasn't less scared or relaxed.

When I got up to go to the bathroom I realized, I was PHYSICALLY impacted greatly. I felt like I weighed 500 pounds. I wasn't dizzy I was just sloggish. If sloggish were a word, that was what I was. I slogged to the bathroom, slogged back to the chair.

I felt annoyed. My bottom left molar kept stopping feeling numb. In the middle of drilling, this is not happy fun times.

I got home, and tried to eat a soft piece of toast by mostly gumming it in the spot where my wisdom teeth used to be.

My temp drown popped off.

I stuck it back on, and called. The receptionist told me if it came off again to come back.

Hours later, eating creamy yogurt, it came off again. I rushed back over, after 5pm, to have it resealed. They gave me a cement kit in case it came off again and said if it can't make it the two weeks before my perm crowns arrive then they will have to use a more perm cement and numb me back up to take it off. You can guess how likely I am to be ok with that.

Liquid diet for two weeks? Ok by me.

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More Root Canals Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I have now had five root canals in my life. One I've had repeated. So let's call that six. That seems like a lot to me.

My first root canal was almost 20 years ago. It was so unpleasant and torturous that I wouldn't let them crown it. It still is filled with the temporary they put on it back then. It hasn't given me ANY trouble since then and honestly I don't give a fig. It can stay like this.

Since then I've had other, better experiences. Clearly the technology has changed, and I've probably gotten better dentists over the years. I had two yesterday, and two crowns. Lately I've been so full of anxiety over anything medical ESPECIALLY the dentist, I decided to try this gas everyone talks about. People will say OH GET THE GAS ITS GREAT.

The gas is a lie.

Here is what I wanted. I wanted to feel calm. MENTALLY. I knew the gas didn't do pain management, but I wanted to not be freaking terrorized as they jabbed again and again trying to get me numb enough to drill. Did I mention I'm hard to get numb enough? I wanted to not be so freaking scared of the drilling that my heart nearly leaped out of my chest. I wanted not to feel like I was going to DIE in the chair.

Here is what I got. First of all it felt like nothing. No difference. Mentally, I felt like, NO CHANGE. No difference in the level of fear or worry or anxiety. I was still clawing at the walls of my mental cell. I did notice though that my heart wasn't trying escape through my throat. Small improvement. I wasn't clawing up my own hands, also improvement. But I didn't FEEL better. I wasn't less scared or relaxed.

When I got up to go to the bathroom I realized, I was PHYSICALLY impacted greatly. I felt like I weighed 500 pounds. I wasn't dizzy I was just sloggish. If sloggish were a word, that was what I was. I slogged to the bathroom, slogged back to the chair.

I felt annoyed. My bottom left molar kept stopping feeling numb. In the middle of drilling, this is not happy fun times.

I got home, and tried to eat a soft piece of toast by mostly gumming it in the spot where my wisdom teeth used to be.

My temp drown popped off.

I stuck it back on, and called. The receptionist told me if it came off again to come back.

Hours later, eating creamy yogurt, it came off again. I rushed back over, after 5pm, to have it resealed. They gave me a cement kit in case it came off again and said if it can't make it the two weeks before my perm crowns arrive then they will have to use a more perm cement and numb me back up to take it off. You can guess how likely I am to be ok with that.

Liquid diet for two weeks? Ok by me.

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