Wretched Nuisances, Teeth...

Hi there!  I'm sure you've wondered where my tennis posts have been.  Or...maybe not.  Well, tennis posts are upcoming, but here's a brief diversion.  If you're squeamish about the dentist, perhaps you'd better skip this post.  Here's the short version of why I've been delayed in posting:  after having such a lovely vacation week, last Saturday I had a toothache, but I took some advil and it went away.  Sunday, the toothache returned and it wouldn't go away.  I started to get desperate because I was in a lot of pain and I hate my current dentist.  At around 4am, I called 1-800-DENTIST.  They gave me a referral of a gent near my office who specializes in working on people with phobias about the dentist (someday, maybe I'll do a post about all my phobias).  The dentist called me around 6:30am and told me to come on in.  I got to his office around 7:30am Monday morning - he took an x-ray of the area where I was in pain and told me that a root canal I had received about two years ago (from the dentist I hate) was completely botched and now it is infected.  Oh, great, I've been carrying that infection around for TWO YEARS!  He told me he'd have to remove the crown and stuff, clean it out, then redo the root canal and replace the crown.  Ugh.  So, after giving me two shots of numbing stuff, he started.  He could only do so much because it was still causing me agonizing pain, due to the infection.  He put a temporary filling in and told me to take some antibiotics and pain pills and to come back in two days.  I went to work but could only last a couple of hours, I was in so much pain.  My office mates couldn't quite deal with me.  I went home to cry until the pain pills finally kicked in.  That was Monday.

I can't smile and I'm hiding my grapefruit, but we had fun

Tuesday, my face swelled up to the size of a grapefruit.  Well, one side did.  I called the dentist and he said it was normal.  I stayed in bed most of the day.  Even though I felt like crap, I still went to the US Open to see some tennis with my friends.  I only lasted through the first match (yay, Roger! I'll blog about it more later), then went home.  Wednesday, I went back to the dentist.  He took another x-ray of the tooth and told me that the infection spread because when he went in to redo the root canal, it opened everything up, so the infection spread from my tooth bones to the tissues around it.  Yuck, right?  He also told me that he could go back in and do more cleaning and stuff, but the tooth was in pretty bad shape and might not even be salvagable, even with all the work.  He suggested that since I was already on the antibiotic, he should just extract the tooth.  I said ok.  In my naivete, I thought the pain would immediately disappear once the tooth was gone.  Ha ha.  Extracting the tooth was pretty painful - he actually had to drill it apart and take it out in three sections.  Then he gave me gauze and told me to bite down on it for 30 minutes.  I thought, ok, it takes about 30 minutes to get home on the subway, so I can just hang on until I get home.  Jesus H Christ, that was the longest subway ride of my life.  I thought I might die before I got home.  I so should've taken a cab home.  The pain was excruciating and people were staring at me and my grapefruit face.  I probably looked like a crazy person, fidgeting and crying, just trying to make it until I got home.  Thankfully, when I finally got home and removed the gauze, all was well, I seemed to be healing the way the care sheet explained, and I took another pain pill and took to my couch for another two days.  I started putting a wet washcloth in the freezer to put on my face to help with the swelling and the discomfort.  It seemed to work.  Though I kept right on crying, now because I was so tired.  Between the antibiotic and the pain pill, I was taking some sort of medicine every four hours.  Both of the pills have to be taken with food, so not much sleep can be had in four hour spurts.  Wah wah wah.



All I've been able to eat for a week

Thankfully, today I'm feeling a little better and made it into the office.  I got a bit of work done and later I'll do a couple of tennis auto-posts and hope to get back on schedule soon.  I see the dentist again after Labor Day - if anything crazy happens, I'll be sure to let you know.  Oh, and the title of this post?  It's a quote from the Hitchcock film Rebecca.  In case you were wondering...  :)