Hey waiter, there's a tooth in my soup!

Wait a minute, that's not just any tooth!

No!

It's my temporary crown.

That was just put on YESTERDAY, for God's sake!!!

And so began the painful saga of a crappy weekend.

On Thursday I sat through a two and a half hour ordeal that involved the grinding of an upper back molar down to nothing, and having a crown placed.

I was thrilled that I was not scheduled to work at the inn on Friday night, nor at my office job on Saturday morning (three of us rotate the Saturday morning schedule), so that meant Hans and I could go out dancing all night on Friday and sleep in on Saturday.

Not!

Friday evening, we had no sooner started sharing a bowl of chicken gumbo when I realized there was something very hard in my soup. You guessed it, my temporary crown was indeed 'temporary"!

With tooth in hand, and heart in throat, I ran to the ladies room and realized very quickly that there was no way that tooth was going back in without help.

A quick call to the doctor's office resulted in an appointment for the next morning at eight AM.

It wasn't long before the pain started and by the time we got home I couldn't get to the Vicadan (wisdom tooth, different doctor) fast enough.

Just take a serrated knife and shove it through one of your teeth, saw back and forth for a few hours and you'll get an idea of what I was going through.

Two hours later I took another Vicadan (my prescription states, one pill every 4 to 6 hours) and had to have Hans call the emergency room as I was in severe pain and the doctor wasn't returning my midnight calls.

They told me NOT to take another pain pill but that I could take some Ibuprofen, which I immediately did and after awhile the pain subsided and I was able to get some sleep.

Hans was not a happy camper! I've had a couple of bad experiences with my dentist in the last couple of years and Hans wanted a piece of him. The dentist was lucky because it was his partner that was on call, and who took care of me the next morning, and not him.

It didn't take long for him to declare that a root canal was necessary and we were going to do it right now.

And he did.

I also had to go to work at the inn Saturday night so I went straight to bed when we got home so that I would be able to function and hopefully not drool all over my customers!

I now have to go to another city for some more work and then back to my dentist to finish up.

Are they going to charge me for the root canal?

Probably.

Should I have to pay for it since the only reason I needed it was because a poorly placed temporary fell out?

I don't think so.

Am I a big pushover?

Yes.

This same doctor once prescribed Penicillin for me and I'm allergic to it. The replacement antibiotic was Clindamyacin which was far too strong, and put me in the hospital for a week with C-diff. I also had a cap placed on a front tooth and during the procedure he must have gotten too close to my sinuses because my nose ran freely for about 3 days after he was done (and I mean like a hose!). All of this has happened since I started dating Hans so you can see why he's a little unhappy.


And the reason this doctor didn't return my midnight calls was because I called him from my cell phone earlier and that's the number he kept. I called from my land line later on, and since it was so late, and since he didn't recognize the number, he decided it was just someone looking for drugs and ignored me!


I told Hans that these so called Golden Years of our lives aren't so Golden.



I think they're pretty damned rusty!

Wisdom? I ain't got none!

Sorta!

This past Saturday morning at the start of a beautiful Memorial Weekend (which happens about once in a blue moon, as I well remember some Memorial Day's that involved winter coats and mittens!), I underwent surgery for the removal of a wisdom tooth.

Now, I've known for over 3 years that this tooth should come out but my fear of anesthesia, and surgery in general kept me from having this procedure done. But I have a lot going on in my future and the fact that health insurance may become an issue was a huge deciding factor for me. So I guess it's only right that I got stuck spending my weekend recovering instead of sailing.

I had one wisdom tooth pulled about 20 years ago, and since it had erupted, the dentist was able to extract it 'in the chair'. All I remember is that it took way longer than it should have and required my dentist to leave the room several times in search of a bigger pair of pliers or other implements of torture. Finally after I was sure my jaw was going to break, the tooth let go with a crack and I spent the next 2 days on my couch, with a swollen face, and a lot of pain medication.

Don't worry, I still packed lunches and cooked meals. After all I wasn't dead.

So knowing that this tooth was impacted, needed to be forcibly removed from my jaw bone, and that my gums would be sliced open, told me that this would be a lot worse that my last experience.

But thanks to the 'happy pill' that I'd taken 90 minutes before my appointment (wisely prescribed by the surgeon who did NOT want to work on this nervous patient), I strolled into the office complete with a goofy grin and dragging Hans in my wake.

I suddenly found myself in the chair, a nitrous mask was strapped to my face, an IV was started, and then someone said, "You're all done, Laura."

I said, "No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"How can I be done?"

"Because your tooth is out and you can go home in a few minutes."

And that was it.

Except for the fact that I had my usual 'tummy trouble ala anesthesia' and had to use a Wendy's parking lot instead of my trusty bucket (I was able to make it to a grassy spot!), I'm amazed at how well everything went. I took a pain pill before we left the parking lot and then 1 every 4 hours until the next morning. By the next day I was eating pizza and today (Monday) we went for a 2 hour bike ride.

My only regret?

That I didn't do this 3 years ago AND that I didn't let them yank the final wisdom tooth that remains!

Yes, I have one left but as I've said before, I'm not the brightest bulb in the box and I'll take my 'smarts' or 'wisdom' from wherever I can get it.