Sunday, June 28, 2009

A Tooth Story

I am in pain!  Really.  Not just the over-acting, can-I-get-an-Academy-Award attention seeking crap that I usually pull.  We are talking severe shooting pain right through my gum and into my cheek.  I was driving home and realized that I had this nagging something stuck in between my favorite-root-canal back tooth and it's sidekick.  Being the multi-tasker, really bad ADD driver that I am, I tried to extract the annoying thing.  When BAM! The crown fell off taking my low-pain-threshold through the roof!  I'm screaming, driving, holding this crown in one hand and trying to get a better look at the grossest tooth ever in the rear view mirror.  I think the guy in the car next to me thought I was having a seizure or something, because he made a spit second decision to move two lanes over and turn right at the next intersection.  Anyway, back to my pain.

Somewhere between being totally grossed out by this whole thing and my attention-whore screaming, I figured out that I should probably call my dentist.  Who, BTW, is the Marque de Sade that gave me this lovely defective dental damage in the first place.  Bastard isn't open on Sundays.  Doesn't he know that his handy work only has a two year shelf life and he should be at my beck and call when it all falls to sh*t?  I leave a message, find my way home through the blinding pain and try to find ANYTHING in my medicine cabinet that is stronger than Tylenol. 

Side note:  I really need to clean out my medicine box.  I have a bin that I keep under my sink for all the random/left over medications I collect though out the year(s).  You know, that half filled bottle of Penicillin you got from that little rusty nail you stepped on five years ago and decided you didn't really need to follow the "Take Until Empty" directions on the bottle.  Or the almost empty bottle of cough syrup that you stopped taking when the coughing stopped (or you figured you were getting a little too involved with the codeine and decided to end the relationship before things got too dependent).  Yeah, I have an entire box filled with those little wonders.  The only thing I DON'T have in that box is any type of  pain killer.  I have every antibiotic ever made and several half -used packets of birth control pills (which confused the hell out of me since A: haven't had "any" in over a year and B: changed "methods" years ago ~ oh sorry, TMI).  But nothing stronger than 600 mg of motrin.  Which doesn't do a damn thing for me personally.  

Back to story.  So Dentist de Sade finally calls me back.  He tells me to "push the crown back on, but be sure to take it off before you go to bed so you won't choke on it during the night".
WHAT!?!?!  Then he proceeds to tell me that since this is a crown covering a root canal and there isn't any bleeding, it can wait until tomorrow.  OK, I was a little reassured that I was not going to have a whole Tommy Knockers episode and calmed down a bit.  

Then he proceeds to tell me that my tooth should not hurt since it was a root canal and there aren't any nerve endings to feel any pain. OHHHHHHH MY A$$ THIS SUCKER DOESN'T HURT!!!   I don't know what nitrous tank he's been sniffing from, but MY tooth hurts.  It hurts all the way into my jaw and up the right side of my cheek.  I think it has a pulse of it's own and I know I can see it throbbing when I look in the mirror.  (Ms. Tastrophie does pain just about as well as she does camping in the great outdoors with no running water.  Ain't gonna happen.)  I attempt to correct Monsieur Dentist that I am indeed in pain and what is he going to do about it?  I cry.  I whine (which in 9 out of 10 cases works).  I beg.  My dentist must have gone to the Dr. Mengele school of dentistry and steadfastly refused to give in or believe my cries of pain.

After he said no, I took myself back to the bathroom and the medicine box.  This time I frantically dumped the bin onto the bathroom floor.... and there it was!  A small bottle with one lone pill inside and the beautiful word "Darvocet" on the outside.  I swear I felt like I had just unearthed the Holy Grail.  Now all I can say is Thank You to those wonderful people who made this little white pill and that I'm off to go chase a White Rabbit...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny story. I have a medicine cabinet just like yours. Sorry about the tooth that has to suck.

Wine and Words said...

Hilarious in the telling, not so in the living I am sure. I had a root canal gone bad that had to be pulled. So now I have a bridge. They had to rough up the teeth on either side so the bridge could fit on them. Well, the bridge fell off once and I have had nightmares ever since about having the thing fall off and finding pointy vampire teeth under there that are so sensitive I can't breathe. I HATE THE DENTIST! Your's included.

LarryLilly said...

Can you imagine the great head you could give without that crown on?

Nope, me neither LOL

I feel ya pain.

Going Comomdo said...

Oh God - provide a tooth update - let us know you aren't dying here. I've had a bazillion teeth trials with my kids. Don't even get me started on teeth.

MJenks said...

You won't believe this, but the word verification is "cownsurg", which is almost like "crown" and "surgery".

yeah, I know...it's a stretch.

Oh, and wash that darvocet down with a glass of rum. If...er...I mean...when you wake up, you'll feel like a new person!

Did Budd E. Phat at any time while you were crying about your pain just look at you incredulously and point at his own mouth?

Lisa-tastrophies said...

@Anonymous: Yep, it sucked!

@Wine: I now fully believe that "dentist" is code for "Sadist"

@Larry: OOOHHHH NO!

@DG: I saw your tooth-trials the day before my crown fell out. I almost thought it jinxed me :-)

@Mjenks: You know now that you mention it.... he was looking at me with a smirk on his face.