Friday, March 19, 2010

Typical…

Typical…

I have a four day weekend. That’s right! (un)PTO today and Monday…and a long list of wanna dos to fill it up. Gardening! Cleaning! Organizing! Cooking! Finishing knitting projects!

…jam-packed weekend right here…

The item that was not on the list until a few days ago was “go to the dentist to find out why one of my molars is suddenly so sensitive that even the silky light touch of room temperature water passing over it is an exquisitely painful experience.”

What makes this a particularly joy-filled event is that the molar in question has already had a root canal done on it.

When a tooth that no longer has nerve endings in it starts throbbing like this, it is seldom something easy and readily fixable with a thirty minute appointment.

Sigh.

It was bugging me a bit Wednesday when I made the appointment. All day Thursday, it was, like, the focus of my entire life. I was keenly aware of it throbbing away while I was working.

And of course, I was up most of the night trying not to think about it. Except that I couldn’t help groping at my jaw because seriously, should it not be swollen out to HERE if it feels like this? Why can’t I feel any swelling? Ow, hey, does it actually hurt to touch the outside of my mouth near that molar? OW! Yeah, yeah it does…how about if I poke under my jaw, under the molar…OUCH! AW, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, THAT HURT!!!!! Hmmm. What if I press down from just below my ear in the general direction of the sore tooth…

(Seriously, what is it about toothaches that make us do things like that? I know I’m not alone on this, I’ve watched other people do it too…the tooth hurts, so we poke at it and prod at it and experiment on it…gee, if I take this knife and jam it down between the sore tooth and the one next to it, does that hurt? Why YES! YES, IT DOES…OK, let’s try…)

I took two Vicodin last night, people…they did nada for this pain. (My back felt better, though, so, you know…I had that going for me, anyway.)

Undaunted, I came home from dropping off the Denizens and started doing laundry. Folded one load and then sat whimpering on the sofa waiting for the throbbing to subside. Took another Vicodin. Then two Excedrin. (Which, by the way, I think worked better than the Vicodin.) (Either that, or it took the Vicodin over an hour and a half to kick in, and the fact that I took Excedrin half an hour before was mere coincidence. But somehow, I doubt it.)

Then I thought to myself, Look. You get a day off that isn’t a Whole Family day off what, every two-three months? Get something done! It’s just a little toothache for carp’s sake, quit being such a baby!!

So I got up and grabbed the vacuum cleaner and sucked the cat hair off the play room furniture and then started whimpering to myself.

So I said more stern words about sucking things up and not being such a big baby and moved the furniture out so I could get at the mountains of crumbs and cat hair and dust and dander and we do not want to know what-all else that was under it all. Wiped down the tables. Vacuumed. Ran my new steam cleaner over the floor.

Collapsed in a miserable pile of whole-head throbbing and decided that I am definitely dying and that seriously, in a hundred years, nobody will care whether I died in a clean house or a dirty one and Christ-Awl-Mighty, is it time for my appointment yet…and can a dentist prescribe morphine because WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

I have a very bad feeling about this. It’s like I can sense my entire four day weekend’s plans just…flittering away.

Even the finishing of knitted objects thing is fading out of the picture; I mean, most of them, sure, they’d actually make an awesome thing to do while getting over whatever nasty thing is about to happen…but the one thing that I really wanted to finish?

It involves the sewing machine. Because it involves steeks. Because it is one of the most seriously awesome sweaters I have ever made, and it has been sitting unfinished for months because the last time I tried to finish it, I broke two sewing machine needles and didn’t have a third and then it took months for me to get around to buying a new one because I kept forgetting about it and now I have the needle and was rarin’ to go BUT the very idea of trying to find the sewing machine out there in the garage (which looks like a Goodwill store after a hurricane) and then setting it up and beating the Denizens off me while I try to use it and thinking because steeks are not something you go into all “la la la inch, centimeter, whatever, let’s just eyeball it and hope for the best!”…

meh

It was bad enough that I’m finishing my husband’s sweater just in time for our daytime temperatures to be back in the 70s. Now it looks like he might not get it until Winter 2012.

Well. Fortunately for all of us, it’s time for me to go to the dentist now.

I shall endeavor not to bawl all over the poor man, who really has done nothing to deserve what is about to walk through his door…

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just had a tooth which sounds very much like yours only it had not had a root canal yet. Turned out to be badly infected, had to have root canal and then on massively potent antibiotics. This is nothing to fool around with, just google tooth infection. It will turn your head if not your stomach.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I am de-lurking to offer sympathy and to caution you to not take excedrin and vicodin at the same time. Too much Tylenol that way, can be bad for your liver. Betcha you can guess I'm a nurse!!! Love your blog.
Connie

Science PhD Mom said...

Good luck! I hope it's not as painful as you are expecting to get it fixed (both in the "owie!" way and the $$$ way).

Kere said...

My sympathy! I had a similar thing last weekend. I ended up sitting outside of my dentist BEFORE they opened on a lovely sunny saturday morning as my family winged on up the ren faire without me. I had a killer infected tooth. One excruciating root canal and temp filling later (I get the crown next week) my dentist sent me home with a prescription for Vicodin and Amoxicillin Clavin-something-inate. She told me to take to take one regular Ibuprophen with the Vicodin tablet. Seriously, that was the only thing that worked for me. TL:DR = try an ibuprophen with your Vicodin.

Much love and good tooth mojo!

Quilty bird said...

I had the same thing - also in a tooth that already had a root canal. Couldn't do anything but watch tv for days. And I'm not the kind of person who watches tv.