2007: Year Of Pain?

And not in a good way.

On Saturday, my mouth was hurting. Now I've been out of sorts the whole month, since down at Black Rose. it was a weird sort of infirmity. First it was in my chest, then my head, then sore throat... I could understand why illness used to be associated with demonic possession. That's definitely the way it felt.

So I thought that the mouth thing was just an extended sore throat. But by Sunday, it was becoming clear that something new was happening here.

Closer inspection seemed to indicate something swollen on the roof of my mouth. Which was weird, right? So I was thinking salivary gland. And hit the net, where I discovered that it could very well be my mandibular salivary gland.

This made it hurt more. I hardly slept at all Sunday night. It. Hurt. So. Bad.

I would manage to drift off, then wake up forty-five minutes later just hurtin hurtin hurtin.

Good day for a sick day, right?

Well, no. For one thing, I wanted to get to my new doctor, recommended to me by JPZapper and DogTopper. And he's great. Best doctor I've ever had. And he's in Philly. And, I had a Board of Directors meeting that night. (Could the timing have been better?)

I made an appointment with Dr. Wonderful for 2 p.m. and headed down. On the way, hot tub guy called me. He's going to be out of town and asked if I could water his plants. I can deny the man nothing of course, so I stopped by on my way to Dr. Wonderful's office so he could show me the plant watering process.

And hot tub guy was full of lovingkindness and concern. "Oh you poor guy! Show me where it hurts."

Now, I spent a lot of time in my life looking after sick people. My first stepmother who had cancer, my grandfather, whatever man I was dating when he got a cold or whatever, and of course my time here in Bucksylonian Captivity began with me changing my second stepmother's diaper... But--indicative of the fundamental injustice of the post-lapserian world--when I'm sick, I'm left to fend for myself.

So hot tub guy's giving me a hug and telling me it was all gonna be alright went a long, long way.

So Dr. Wonderful gave me the news that it wasn't a swollen mandibular salivary gland. It was an abscessed molar. And I had to see a dentist. He also gave me a script for penicillin and percaset.

The percaset has been interesting. Such. Vivid. Dreams. Beating off before I went to bed the other night... My usual masturbatory fantasies certainly had a hallucinatory quality. And then there's that warm fuzzy everything-is-right-with-the-world quality. It's also highly addictive, so when the dark day comes, I'll be a in for a rough time. But that's chemical dependency for ya!

So today was the dentist. Now, I haven't been to the dentist in three years. I had a dentist I liked a lot in NYC, but with the combination of low wages and no dental plan at Wuperior Soodcraft, that was a great excuse not to go. And I have teeth like chalk. I brush, I floss, and I've never had a check up where I didn't have a cavity.

And I've got a doozy. Three extractions and one root canal. And I'm going to be having a Deep Cleaning. Which sounds pretty sinister to me.

So for the next several months, I'm going to be heading to the dentist to spend an hour or so whimpering in pain in the chair.

But tonight, an hour into my nightly percaset journey...

Well, I'm doin' okay.

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