root canal, complications, etc.
Feb. 19th, 2006 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verushka70 Ok, so the tooth that was bothering me more and more until 8 days ago when I broke down and bought Anbesol (topical anesthetic) to put on my gums was finally seen by the dentist on Monday 2/13. She tells me I need a root canal, but I have to have it on Wednesday 2/15 because the root canal guy goes on vacation for a week and a half on Thursday 2/16. So I agree to this, because I'm in a ton of pain and I really just want it to stop.
I get a letter from the dentist because it so happens my first day of hospital clinical work this semester is Wednesday 2/16 from 7am (egad) to 3pm. Or so I thought. And they never let you get out of stuff without it being serious and without a letter.
Fortunately, we have our orientation that day, and we get out early. I get to the root canal 20 minutes early.
I'm apprehensive. Normally I'm pretty stoic but tooth and dental pain make me a total pain sissy. I can't take it. A year ago I needed a filling and the dentist just couldn't get my fuckin' tooth completely numb. I hate that bone-chilling feeling that you just chewed on a piece of aluminum foil. And, to top it off, this may be hereditary: after I told my mother on Monday that I needed a root canal, and how much trouble the dentist had had numbing my tooth a year ago, my mom nonchalantly tells me, "Oh, I have a tooth that never gets numb." Oh, thanks for telling me that... NOW!
So I get in for the root canal. I'm still in my student nurse scrubs because I came straight from the hospital. The root canal dentist (not an endodontist, just a dentist with special training I'm told) tells me he does nothing but root canals all day, every day, and it shouldn't be a problem. I'm like, "Okay, but I want to warn you, I am a sissy about tooth pain, and it's hard to numb me sometimes."
Long story short, he had to shoot me up twice before beginning drilling through my crown; and then party way through, TWICE, he had to shoot up my gum with more anesthetic. Because I COULD FEEL IT. Which was really upsetting, but, whatever. I just wanted it to be OVER.
So that night all I could eat was ice cream. (Okay, I could've eaten something more nutritious, but I CHOSE ice cream -- Haagen Dasz, asamatta afac.) The next day, I'm wondering why my gum and tooth are still so sore, but I figure, whatever. They've got me on Tylenol #3s so I'm generally not feeling too much pain and I'm alternating those with 3 advils as instructed, so the inflammation should be subsiding... right?
By Thursday night I look at my gum around the root-canaled tooth in the mirror and it looks black and purple and red and raw and torn and I'm thinking, Uh, that doesn't look right... they didn't do anything to my gums, they drilled straight through the crown... what gives? Not to mention that it was also in throbbing pain that the advils and Tylenol 3s were not getting rid of. Fell asleep with that cheek on an ice pack. Resolved to call dentist in the AM about frighteningly weird looking gum around the root-canaled tooth.
Got up for Med/Surg II lecture the next morning in more pain. Call dentist. She isn't in the office. Describe symptoms to receptionist. She asks where I can be called back; I explain I can't, because I'm going to class. She says she'll have the dentist call me at home & leave a message on my answering machine, asks if I have a preferred pharmacy. I do, so I give her the number to my closest Walgreens.
While I am in class, the dentist calls me, tells me to come in Saturday between 9am and 1pm, and tells me she called in the Rx for penicillin to the Walgreens. I'm like, okay, good. By this time I'm thinking I have necrotizing fasciitis -- the flesh-eating disease -- in my gums, because that is exactly what it looks like (I have seen this in pictures I helped a doctor put into his PowerPoint presentation at my last job). I'm thinking, Oh, my god, I'm doomed, all I wanted was a simply root canal and an end to my tooth pain, and now I have the flesh eating disease in my mouth! I had already started neurotically rinsing my mouth with hot salt water Thursday night, not knowing what else to do...
Fortunately when I went in on Saturday the dentist looked at it and said, "Oh, I've seen this before. It's a reaction to the anesthetic, and he told me that you had a 'hot tooth' and required a lot of anesthetic. It should clear up in a few days, but keep taking the penicillin, because with your gum so raw, it does pose an infection risk." She also tells me to rinse my mouth with warm salt water and I proudly tell her I have already been doing so.
I'm like, THANK GOD! I don't have the flesh-eating disease in my mouth! I am so grateful. I go home, I rinse my mouth with salt water, and I settle in for an afternoon of Med/Surg reading and studying.
Only one problem: I don't like this codeine crap in the Tylenol 3s. In fact, every time I take it, it makes my face flush and gives me a headache. I shouldn't, but I have leftover drugs of my father's -- some generic Darvocet N-100s. These also have Tylenol in them, but they have hydrocodone instead of codeine, a slightly different morphine derivative. I decide to experiment on myself and see if the Darvocets work better than the Tylenol 3s. I take one at bedtime which the non-endo root canal dentist had originally told me to do.
Knocks me out, first of all (which the codeine did not). Second of all, as I discovered this afternoon, it does NOT give me a headache or make my face flush. Yay.
Unfortunately, in the middle of this afternoon, I tripped over a waffle iron (don't ask) in the junk-cum-computer room (don't ask), and I think I may have broken my toe. Since I was between doses of both advil and darvocet, I couldn't take anything for it. So I now have it propped up and throbbing, although I iced it for a while. Either it's broken or the nail is going to come off. It's all blue and purple under the toenail of my big toe. Yet more trauma to my poor fucked up feet. Damn. I just hope it is okay by Wednesday when we get our first patients and I will be on my feet for 8 fucking hours straight. Sigh.
Now back to studying my pharmacology notes for the exam Thursday. Oh joy. I keep saying I can't wait until this is over, but... there is over a year left of this... and it seems so long and tiring when I think about how much more I have yet to go. Sigh. I just want to get done with nursing school, get my RN, and get back to work making what I was making when I got laid off in '03. Sigh. I shouldn't complain, I guess; many people don't have the opportunity I do to retrain themselves for a new career. But I'm so tired of being in school a second time and being 38 and having no life...
And my ex keeps harping on how we belong together and he still loves me and all this. How can I explain I feel dead to him now? Finally I said, Look, here's something that occurred to me in the last few days: I am tired of dating men who don't bring me flowers or chocolates or ANYTHING. It's not really that hard. In fact, it's kind of a no-brainer. He says, "I brought you flowers!" I'm like, "You brought me flowers TWICE, and I had to drop massive hints both times, and the first time you were so resentful about the fact that I wanted flowers for a 'Hallmark holiday' that you completely ruined the effect of the flowers. WTF!?" He first denied it, but then sheepishly admitted that, yes, that was true... he had resented the 'Hallmark holiday' flower giving. I'm like, Why? When you were dating hairdressers and chicks with fake nails and fake hair and fake tits, didn't you open doors for them, buy them flowers, buy them chocolates?
There's a long pause on the phone and he says, "Yeah, I guess I did." And I'm like, "So why didn't you do that with me?" Another long pause and he finally says, "I guess I didn't see you as that kind of girl." I'm like, "What does THAT mean? That kind of girl"? I am still a woman, for pete's sake, I like nice things, I like flowers. I'm like, "Okay, I don't know what 'that kind of girl' is."
And he says, "Yes, you do, you know exactly what 'that kind of girl' is -- the kind that don't think, the kind I can't talk politics with, the kind who don't understand how our foreign policy makes people hate us, the kind I can't take to movies like Good Night And Good Luck or Syriana." And I'm like, "Okay, fine, then I know what 'that kind of girl' is... but what makes you think that women who aren't like that don't want flowers or chocolates?" And he pauses again and says, "Well, because they're less superficial than the big-hair chicks."
So then we had a discussion about whether or not flowers and chocolates are superficial in and of themselves, him saying that those are the things you do with women when you can't think what else to do with them, and me saying, "But ALL women -- or at least almost all women -- would be pleased by flowers and/or chocolates. It's just a nice thing to do!"
So then (I should've seen THIS coming a mile away, but, dope that I am, I didn't!) he says, "So if I start buying you flowers and chocolates, then will you marry me?" And it's my turn to have a long pause on the phone, which he finally interrupted before I formulated an answer and said, "Forget it, I'll stop asking, nothing's going to change your mind." I said, "Look, there's a lot of water under the bridge here, and I don't know how to erase the whiteboard of our relationship and start fresh. I don't know if that is even possible." What I didn't say was, I'm not attracted to you anymore and I don't feel lust for you anymore and I can't fake that and you will be able to tell which is why I called a halt to the booty calls, before you figured it out.
As usual, I don't know what to do. But I put it all under the heading of "I'm in nursing school, and it is stressful enough; I don't have time for ANY relationship, let alone reassessing the relationship with you." And hope he buys it... for a while anyway.
How does one rekindle things? Especially after what killed it was knowing that, at first evaluation, you were found undesirable for marriage? Because that was what he said to me almost two years ago: that he liked being with me but he didn't want to get married. And, at the time, I thought: you just don't want to marry me. So, okay, fine, I kept going out with him, which might have been stupid, but we had many good things in our relationship. But I never forgot that I was basically found 'not good enough' for a number of reasons, including my lack of being Catholic and general agnosticism. Of course, like many people I suppose, he figures out much later that I really AM the right woman for him... and by that time, I am no longer interested; he has pissed me off and hurt my feelings one time too many... including never bringing me flowers except those two times, once under duress.
So... yeah, the rekindling. Not happening. Not really trying. All I know is, the harder he pushes, the less enthused I am. I should just stop talking to him altogether, but I don't because, selfishly, I still enjoy his friendship and conversation. But I'm afraid the time has come to shit or get off the pot. Which has a decidedly unromantic sound to it. But neither of us will move on if we don't.
Sigh.
Okay, for some strange reason, LJ says it is 11:11pm. But really it is about 5 minutes to 6pm. I dunno what's up with that...
I get a letter from the dentist because it so happens my first day of hospital clinical work this semester is Wednesday 2/16 from 7am (egad) to 3pm. Or so I thought. And they never let you get out of stuff without it being serious and without a letter.
Fortunately, we have our orientation that day, and we get out early. I get to the root canal 20 minutes early.
I'm apprehensive. Normally I'm pretty stoic but tooth and dental pain make me a total pain sissy. I can't take it. A year ago I needed a filling and the dentist just couldn't get my fuckin' tooth completely numb. I hate that bone-chilling feeling that you just chewed on a piece of aluminum foil. And, to top it off, this may be hereditary: after I told my mother on Monday that I needed a root canal, and how much trouble the dentist had had numbing my tooth a year ago, my mom nonchalantly tells me, "Oh, I have a tooth that never gets numb." Oh, thanks for telling me that... NOW!
So I get in for the root canal. I'm still in my student nurse scrubs because I came straight from the hospital. The root canal dentist (not an endodontist, just a dentist with special training I'm told) tells me he does nothing but root canals all day, every day, and it shouldn't be a problem. I'm like, "Okay, but I want to warn you, I am a sissy about tooth pain, and it's hard to numb me sometimes."
Long story short, he had to shoot me up twice before beginning drilling through my crown; and then party way through, TWICE, he had to shoot up my gum with more anesthetic. Because I COULD FEEL IT. Which was really upsetting, but, whatever. I just wanted it to be OVER.
So that night all I could eat was ice cream. (Okay, I could've eaten something more nutritious, but I CHOSE ice cream -- Haagen Dasz, asamatta afac.) The next day, I'm wondering why my gum and tooth are still so sore, but I figure, whatever. They've got me on Tylenol #3s so I'm generally not feeling too much pain and I'm alternating those with 3 advils as instructed, so the inflammation should be subsiding... right?
By Thursday night I look at my gum around the root-canaled tooth in the mirror and it looks black and purple and red and raw and torn and I'm thinking, Uh, that doesn't look right... they didn't do anything to my gums, they drilled straight through the crown... what gives? Not to mention that it was also in throbbing pain that the advils and Tylenol 3s were not getting rid of. Fell asleep with that cheek on an ice pack. Resolved to call dentist in the AM about frighteningly weird looking gum around the root-canaled tooth.
Got up for Med/Surg II lecture the next morning in more pain. Call dentist. She isn't in the office. Describe symptoms to receptionist. She asks where I can be called back; I explain I can't, because I'm going to class. She says she'll have the dentist call me at home & leave a message on my answering machine, asks if I have a preferred pharmacy. I do, so I give her the number to my closest Walgreens.
While I am in class, the dentist calls me, tells me to come in Saturday between 9am and 1pm, and tells me she called in the Rx for penicillin to the Walgreens. I'm like, okay, good. By this time I'm thinking I have necrotizing fasciitis -- the flesh-eating disease -- in my gums, because that is exactly what it looks like (I have seen this in pictures I helped a doctor put into his PowerPoint presentation at my last job). I'm thinking, Oh, my god, I'm doomed, all I wanted was a simply root canal and an end to my tooth pain, and now I have the flesh eating disease in my mouth! I had already started neurotically rinsing my mouth with hot salt water Thursday night, not knowing what else to do...
Fortunately when I went in on Saturday the dentist looked at it and said, "Oh, I've seen this before. It's a reaction to the anesthetic, and he told me that you had a 'hot tooth' and required a lot of anesthetic. It should clear up in a few days, but keep taking the penicillin, because with your gum so raw, it does pose an infection risk." She also tells me to rinse my mouth with warm salt water and I proudly tell her I have already been doing so.
I'm like, THANK GOD! I don't have the flesh-eating disease in my mouth! I am so grateful. I go home, I rinse my mouth with salt water, and I settle in for an afternoon of Med/Surg reading and studying.
Only one problem: I don't like this codeine crap in the Tylenol 3s. In fact, every time I take it, it makes my face flush and gives me a headache. I shouldn't, but I have leftover drugs of my father's -- some generic Darvocet N-100s. These also have Tylenol in them, but they have hydrocodone instead of codeine, a slightly different morphine derivative. I decide to experiment on myself and see if the Darvocets work better than the Tylenol 3s. I take one at bedtime which the non-endo root canal dentist had originally told me to do.
Knocks me out, first of all (which the codeine did not). Second of all, as I discovered this afternoon, it does NOT give me a headache or make my face flush. Yay.
Unfortunately, in the middle of this afternoon, I tripped over a waffle iron (don't ask) in the junk-cum-computer room (don't ask), and I think I may have broken my toe. Since I was between doses of both advil and darvocet, I couldn't take anything for it. So I now have it propped up and throbbing, although I iced it for a while. Either it's broken or the nail is going to come off. It's all blue and purple under the toenail of my big toe. Yet more trauma to my poor fucked up feet. Damn. I just hope it is okay by Wednesday when we get our first patients and I will be on my feet for 8 fucking hours straight. Sigh.
Now back to studying my pharmacology notes for the exam Thursday. Oh joy. I keep saying I can't wait until this is over, but... there is over a year left of this... and it seems so long and tiring when I think about how much more I have yet to go. Sigh. I just want to get done with nursing school, get my RN, and get back to work making what I was making when I got laid off in '03. Sigh. I shouldn't complain, I guess; many people don't have the opportunity I do to retrain themselves for a new career. But I'm so tired of being in school a second time and being 38 and having no life...
And my ex keeps harping on how we belong together and he still loves me and all this. How can I explain I feel dead to him now? Finally I said, Look, here's something that occurred to me in the last few days: I am tired of dating men who don't bring me flowers or chocolates or ANYTHING. It's not really that hard. In fact, it's kind of a no-brainer. He says, "I brought you flowers!" I'm like, "You brought me flowers TWICE, and I had to drop massive hints both times, and the first time you were so resentful about the fact that I wanted flowers for a 'Hallmark holiday' that you completely ruined the effect of the flowers. WTF!?" He first denied it, but then sheepishly admitted that, yes, that was true... he had resented the 'Hallmark holiday' flower giving. I'm like, Why? When you were dating hairdressers and chicks with fake nails and fake hair and fake tits, didn't you open doors for them, buy them flowers, buy them chocolates?
There's a long pause on the phone and he says, "Yeah, I guess I did." And I'm like, "So why didn't you do that with me?" Another long pause and he finally says, "I guess I didn't see you as that kind of girl." I'm like, "What does THAT mean? That kind of girl"? I am still a woman, for pete's sake, I like nice things, I like flowers. I'm like, "Okay, I don't know what 'that kind of girl' is."
And he says, "Yes, you do, you know exactly what 'that kind of girl' is -- the kind that don't think, the kind I can't talk politics with, the kind who don't understand how our foreign policy makes people hate us, the kind I can't take to movies like Good Night And Good Luck or Syriana." And I'm like, "Okay, fine, then I know what 'that kind of girl' is... but what makes you think that women who aren't like that don't want flowers or chocolates?" And he pauses again and says, "Well, because they're less superficial than the big-hair chicks."
So then we had a discussion about whether or not flowers and chocolates are superficial in and of themselves, him saying that those are the things you do with women when you can't think what else to do with them, and me saying, "But ALL women -- or at least almost all women -- would be pleased by flowers and/or chocolates. It's just a nice thing to do!"
So then (I should've seen THIS coming a mile away, but, dope that I am, I didn't!) he says, "So if I start buying you flowers and chocolates, then will you marry me?" And it's my turn to have a long pause on the phone, which he finally interrupted before I formulated an answer and said, "Forget it, I'll stop asking, nothing's going to change your mind." I said, "Look, there's a lot of water under the bridge here, and I don't know how to erase the whiteboard of our relationship and start fresh. I don't know if that is even possible." What I didn't say was, I'm not attracted to you anymore and I don't feel lust for you anymore and I can't fake that and you will be able to tell which is why I called a halt to the booty calls, before you figured it out.
As usual, I don't know what to do. But I put it all under the heading of "I'm in nursing school, and it is stressful enough; I don't have time for ANY relationship, let alone reassessing the relationship with you." And hope he buys it... for a while anyway.
How does one rekindle things? Especially after what killed it was knowing that, at first evaluation, you were found undesirable for marriage? Because that was what he said to me almost two years ago: that he liked being with me but he didn't want to get married. And, at the time, I thought: you just don't want to marry me. So, okay, fine, I kept going out with him, which might have been stupid, but we had many good things in our relationship. But I never forgot that I was basically found 'not good enough' for a number of reasons, including my lack of being Catholic and general agnosticism. Of course, like many people I suppose, he figures out much later that I really AM the right woman for him... and by that time, I am no longer interested; he has pissed me off and hurt my feelings one time too many... including never bringing me flowers except those two times, once under duress.
So... yeah, the rekindling. Not happening. Not really trying. All I know is, the harder he pushes, the less enthused I am. I should just stop talking to him altogether, but I don't because, selfishly, I still enjoy his friendship and conversation. But I'm afraid the time has come to shit or get off the pot. Which has a decidedly unromantic sound to it. But neither of us will move on if we don't.
Sigh.
Okay, for some strange reason, LJ says it is 11:11pm. But really it is about 5 minutes to 6pm. I dunno what's up with that...
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Date: 2006-02-20 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 04:02 am (UTC)