Dry Socket to Me!

Princess Kitten here.

Ah the dentist. I am making up for time lost to their tender embrace.

The last week has lead me to an uncomfortable bit of self-knowledge.

I appear to love having masked women prod my mouth with metal instruments.

I must. I've been back to the dentist office twice since last friday. And that is what dentists, and hygienists and dental assistants appear to do. Maybe they have off hours where they aren't jabbing folk with do-hickies that they have lying about the office. There are 24 hours in a day after all? How long can the jiggery-pokery keep one entertained? Long enough to fill 20 or 30 year long careers it seems.

No clue what path this new found understanding will force me down, but I expect it will end with “Getting A Face Tattoo”. I really wonder if the more artistically inclined subset of humanity, who enjoy the whole jabby-jabby activities on the whole, go into tattooing instead of dentistry.

I felt that I was doing fantastically well the weekend after my extractions. And maybe I was. The bleeding was lessening, and I wasn't in tremendous pain. In fact, I managed to get a couple of long hikes in over the course of two really beautiful days(seriously, sunny and 50 degrees in Febuary?). So all was well.

All I had to look forward to, was getting my sutures removed on the following Friday, and I was home free. And then the pain didn't stop. In fact, it got worse. Imagine someone slowly pressing a screw-driver into your temple. And then just leaving it there for hours upon hours.

The experience is frightening, or it was to me. I worried about having an infection that the Amoxicillin wasn't prepared for. And after 2 days of discomfort, I called my dentist office again and requested an early visit to their kind and stabby domicile. They assented, and I found myself once again leaning back in a chair as another masked women poked at my teeth and asked me if I felt any pain.

Nope. None there. Just the impending implosion of my maxilla as it all burst inwards.

They said my gums appeared to be a bit agitated, but looked to be healing well. But decided to up my anti-biotic to ten day regimen of augmentin. The sister informed me that I am in line for a nice case of Thrush. A fungal infection that is often suffered by people who take heavy doses of anti-biotics.

I thanked her kindly for setting another anxiety in my path. Just what I needed.

But, they placed a medicated pack into my wounded gum and placed more gauze over the newest edition to my jaw. Really, there was room, as now there were 2 holes just sitting there. Waiting to be filled. Don't read anything into that.

The effect was rather quick. The pain went away. And then they packed my face with some more gauze. Really, I think that I'm developing a pathological fear of gauze, soft as it may be. Gauze seems to manufacture saliva, and as I was driving back to work about a gallon seemed to materialize in my mouth. And there it sat, as spitting is impossible as you try to keep a wad of gauze clenched between your teeth. All you can do is open the flood gates and release a tsunami of drool.

When I returned to work, I felt fantastic. The lack of pain left me feeling energetic and happy. That lasted until the following morning. After yet another night of rough sleep, the pain returned. Thursday was a eternal.

I was noticing a rather large hole in the back of my jaw, were the wisdom tooth usta been. A gap in the gums through which you could see all the way to the bone. That folks, is dry socket. The cause of my pain. To paraphrase the eloquence of The Iron Sheik – THE DRY SOCKET IS A JABRONI, FUCK THE DRY SOCKET LIKE THE MONDAY!

Friday seemed longer. Felt crappy. Even though the pain receded. Only had to make it until that evening for endgame(probably not, the way my luck runs). I returned to the dentist office for hopefully for the last time, to finally have my sutures removed.

The Dr. wasn't about for the sutures. But one of the 4 Hygienists I've seen over the course of the week was able to step up. Which is how I found myself in yet another chair, being poked by a new set of tools.

She found a sliver of bone sticking out of my gum and plucked that, before removing the sutures proper. And then re-packing my face with a syringe full of gel called Sockit! Sockit! Is wonderful. I don't know how well it works. But I love puns. And it seems to be keeping my pain at bay.

Hopefully this is all over soon.

I don't think that I have the fortitude to live with chronic pain. I wonder how people manage to live like that, and don't know if they inspire me or not. I think I might be inclined to take the easier way out, as all Princess' must. That is, picking a knife-fight against a biker gang in some Mexican dive, giving a good account of myself, before finally going down for good.

It's our way.

I am a delicate flower

I am a delicate flower.

The company that I work for offers free health insurance. All you need to do is participate in a health screening and forgo the use of tobacco products. The latter is a cinch. The former involves a blood draw. All in all, it saves me around $1000 over the course of the year. That is quite a chunk of change.

I was OK with the process – which is basically the phlebotomist taking your blood pressure and heart rate – followed by a couple vials of blood with which to run some tests. I got through the first half fine, and then was OK well into the second part, where I made the mistake of looking over at the needle and vial sticking out of my arm. Up until that point I was feeling like a bad-ass.

Bam, look at that, my life's blood squirting out of my body to the rhythm of my heartbeat! Neat!

That was where I got kinda feinty. My vision went all wiggly, my temp seemed to explode with the ferocity of a wildfire, and I got all sorts of shaky. I have never liked the sight of blood.

On the up side, I was fine during my second screening a couple weeks ago. Largely because I squeezed my eyes shut as the wonderful woman distracted me. The whole process took about 90 seconds. I had been fearing this since Febtober of 2015.

Results are back, my blood pressure was a little high(but I was stressed) and I have been declared to be slightly overweight. At 6' tall and clocking in at an estimated 185 pounds – I'm clearly a fatty.

Yep, a dainty princess am I.

On this past Monday I developed a rather sudden tooth ache. One that seemed to fork out like lightning through the double row of teeth that hide beneath my left cheek. There, it jumped around like a fat woman waiting in line at Walmart to pee. Like that imagery. You're welcome.

The next day, my teeth still hurt, especially the one directly in front of my left wisdom tooth. Eating was almost excruciating, whenever I tried to employ that molar. So, I avoided it, thinking it might just be part of mild infection. I've had them before. My head was achy, but eventually it cleared up. I was fine the following night until at around 1am, I woke up with a bitching tooth-ache.

I've heard wonderful stories about infections in the mouth traveling to the heart or brain and doing some serious damage. As my brain is probably running on less than four cylinders, I felt that I didn't really wish to risk further complications to degrade my stupid to the next lower level. More so, since I was beginning to feel a bit feverish to boot.

Now, my wisdom teeth came in some 18 years ago. The top two are perfectly straight. No problems there. While the lower teeth came in at rather odd angles – the one on the right was at 45 degrees to the molar in front, while the problem child was a sitting perpendicular.

I've had dental insurance for a couple of years now, but have yet to use it. Taking care of your teeth, when they are so obviously going to cause pain and trouble in the future is clearly a wise move. But, as I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and I play the lotto, I feel that I have proven that I do not make the best decisions in my life. And as I knew my teeth were wonky(an understatement) and would likely have to be extracted.

You may call me kitten.

I shall start the next section with the following: “Fuck Dentist offices and their hours that make bankers look like Hard-driving Puritans.” With that out of the way, I had a list of dentist offices in my locale that took my insurance. Delaying all the while because as an ultimate badass, I didn't really wish to commit myself to what was going to be an unpleasant experience. I started up the closest office, and then expanded out from there.

Finally I found a place that was actually open on fridays, and had room to fit me in for a cleaning and initial prognosis. I was told that they would probably just take x-rays and get me some pain-killers and anti-biotics. 9 am sharp the next day, I am getting my teeth cleaned for the first time in 20 years. And low and behold, it was rather painful and bloody. 20 years of tarter and plaque build-up will do that.

Not to mention a cavity in the problem molar. Fun times!

The experience was both better and worse than I remembered. There was the being jabbed in the sensitive gums with a sharp metal object that reminded me of a article I read in college about the Nacerima tribe and how they subjected themselves, and their children to “Magic Mouth Men” who took a sadistic pleasure in jabbing them with metal hooks and probes. For those who are about as dim as myself Nacermia is American spelled backwards.

There were the questions too. I don't like answering those while getting my haircut. Trying to talk with a face full of rusted nail is all that much worse. Do I brush my teeth? Twice a day? Do I floss? Hah! The last time I flossed a chunk of something broke off my tooth. I swore off it then.

Full on panic has come and gone as I jumped in. Mother Teresa used to give me swirlies. When she was 90.

With all that, my teeth are in surprisingly good shape. Most likely due to the case of fluorosis that I gave myself as a child when I ate toothpaste like candy. The entire time my mind kept returning to two different stories. The first being Bill Cosby's famous bit about dentists. Spot on there man.

I met the dentist, and was informed that he had a opening in his schedule and could take care of my pain. Which would involve taking out both the wisdom tooth and the molar with the cavity. No crowns or root canals mind you. He was just going to tear it out. How did I feel about that? The others could wait until later.

Please don't hurt me Mister.

How folks in the past managed to deal with tooth extractions without the aid of some sort of anesthetic I don't really want to ponder for too long. But I must say that the anesthetic was much more unpleasant in it's own way than the pain of the cleaning. Largely because I have experience dental pain in the past. But rarely has my a significant portion of my face gone numb.

I celebrated this by poking and prodding at my lips and cheeks. Because I am an adult and make terrible choices. But I do appreciate new experiences. Sometimes. And then I found myself in another office, in another chair, waiting for the remainder of my appointment.

I asked a couple times how long this would take. Not so much since I had any plans afterwards, as my anxiety does better with an itinerary. Flying blind leads to panic attacks. A panic attack in a dentist chair didn't seem appealing.

The worst part was the pressure. I could envision the pry-bar that the dentist seemed to be using to attack my molar, just slipping and jabbing into the the counterpart on the far side of my mouth. It was an unpleasant visual. You ever see the first Tim Burton Batman movie? I imagined his rack of instruments to resemble in the surgery scene. Yeah, that was pushing on my skull as he pried at the gums.

One of the crowns finally cracked and he handed it off to his assistant while she vaccumed up All the while he was discussing his weekend and (I assume) his wife's 29^th birthday. Not to mention the rather sadistic attempt at the jokes. He was a nice guy, but that deserved a dick punch. This was about where I began to get myself a bit of the warm and woozies.

They took a break and brought me a fan. I sat in silence with my eyes closed as I waited for the discomfort to pass. The woozies are worse than pain. But we got back to it and I now had a large hole in my mouth where before 2 molars had always been. My Doctor finished the sutures with a flourish and gave me another anesthetic.

I was told that I was ok to drive, so I crossed town and went to the pharmacy to pick up my meds.

Odd, I was doing fine until I read the instructions for post surgical care. First and foremost was about dealing with the hemorrhaging. Hemorrhaging. That is a word that I associate with mothers dying in child birth and soldiers who succumb to their wounds in MASH. Hemorrhaging has some rather negative connotations for me, and is something I don't really want to apply to myself, especially as I pry blood-soaked gauze out of my mouth for like the 4^th time in the last couple hours – along with an ceaseless stream of crimson saliva.

Yeah. I took a seat and let it go.  Now I wait with baited breath to have the other three molars extracted this spring.

I am so damned precious.