life wouldn't be so long

I'm off to finally get this abcessed tooth taken care of. It would have been nice if I wasn't going into the procedure with a raging head/chest cold, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

Visage - Fade to Grey (from Visage, 1980) - All roads lead to entropy...and hopefully the wamth and comfort of my bed once this nonsense is over.

gotta sit tight

I was hoping this day would see me on the other side of the whole abcessed tooth scenario, but, alas, it did not come to be. An excruciating Sunday night, followed by a Monday afternoon visit to the dentist's office, followed by a Tuesday morning consultation with the endodontist, to be followed by a Friday morning root canal therapy session...which had to be postponed until next Tuesday for a host of reasons. At least the antibiotics are keeping the infection -- and its associated pain -- in check for the time being.

If it wasn't for the alarming number of references to "septicemia" and "sinus complications" that cropped up during my Google search for "DIY second molar extraction," I'd be breaking out my handy set of locking pliers and playing McTeague the Home Game this very moment.

I just want it over and done with, so I can get back to my regularly scheduled life. It's not the procedure that bothers me, it's the waiting I can't stand. It's impossible for me to sit back and enjoy myself without being distracted by the irritating sensation that there's something hanging over my head. That applies to more than just oral surgery, too. I keep my life uncluttered for a reason.

Killing Joke - The Wait (from Killing Joke, 1981) - Down the rabbit hole of jagged postpunk nightmares we go.

when I'm over the pain

I'll be at the dentist's office today. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

Wall of Voodoo - Good Times (from Dark Continent, 1981) - Of the the Stan Ridgway kind, not the Jimmy Walker variety. I'm still waiting for a reissue of this album, one of the finest to come out of the SoCal punk/wave scene.

never comprehending the race had long gone by

If there's one lesson I need to learn, it's that the personal complacency that serves me well on so many occasions should not be applied to matters related to dental care. It's not as if I wasn't clued onto that in a big way three months ago, but some habits are harder to break than others.

While I do my best to shoulder my current self-made cross of avoidable stupidity, here are a few things that possess the ability to make me forget the pain, if only for a few short moments...

Kylie Minogue - Did It Again


Belly - Now They'll Sleep


Modern English - I Melt With You

gotta get away

This is (hopefully) the last entry in my toothache series of posts, and I had anticipated a more upbeat conclusion to things. I even had the perfect song picked out to accompany today's entry:

The Brady Bunch - It's a Sunshine Day (from The Kids from the Brady Bunch, 1972) - I know my affection for gooey, sugary things got me into this situation in the first place, but still...

But that decision was made yesterday afternoon, while my face was numbed into quietude by a local and I was giddy with how well things had gone. And go well they did; after a morning of trying to keep the increasingly excruciating pain at arm's length, my wife and I made the trip to the endodontist's office in Quincy Center. My wife was spot on about their quality of care. Every aspect of the treatment was handled with a maximum eye toward allieviating any pain or discomfort I might have been feeling. Because of my wretched state, they cut straight to the procedure from the consulation, and it was performed skillfully, quickly -- and most importantly -- painlessly. Seriously, I've had shallow fillings done that were worse ordeals.

The source of the pain was an infection at the root, so the endodonist wrote me up prescriptions for antibiotics (to clear out the remaining infection) and Vicodin (to handle any remaining pain in the immediate aftermath). I wasn't so keen on taking the painkillers, as my experiences have shown me that there's always an unpleasant debt to be paid for the sake of prescription pain relief.

AFTER the local began to wear off and the inflamed nerves resumed their final doomed offensive, I quickly changed my mind. I forced down a small bowl of soup (so as not to drop powerful narcotics into an empty gut), took a Vicodin, and laid back on my bed, awaiting the bliss of pharmaceutically-induced sleep.

And it truly was blissful, until the last of the local wore off, at which point the neighbor of the treated tooth went supernova, a sharp, searing pain that cut through the narcotic haze like a gamma ray laser. At first I thought the Vicodin wasn't working, but as the initial dose faded the pain got even worse. My mind began coming up with horrible scenarios like "what if they got the wrong tooth?" and "the jarring of the drill must have it cracked open."

As there was nothing that could be done until the morning, I prepared myself for another sleepless night, retreating to the couch (so as to not disturb the wife) and settling in until 9:00 AM with a bowl of ice cubes and some Katamari Damacy. To keep the pain at an almost manageable state, I started upping the dose. One Vicodin every four hours became one and a half every three hours, damn the consequences. Sometime after three in the morning, I did finally nod off for a stretch, but it was a sleep haunted by nightmares which can only be described as "Tina Yothers hosting a gameshow about the apocalypse, presented Phoenix Wright-style."

I woke at seven this morning with a severe narcotic hangover, but no pain. My original assessment of the problem -- a worse than usual case of post-op jarred bone trauma -- was apparently correct. Thank Providence for that, at least. I've spent the rest of the day so far alternating between staggering nauseously around the house and passing out cold on the bed, feeling like nothing so much as a dessicated husk of my previous self. (The lack of sleep and decent nourishment these past couple days hasn't helped.)

The lack of pain in my teeth and jaw is nice, though. Hopefully I'll be a state to fully appreciate that soon.

The Crystal Method - Trip Like I Do (from Vegas, 1997) - Over the ottoman, over the edge of the rug, over Oscar the Pughuahua, over my own two feet...

tonight I can't hold a pen

Following up on yesterday's post:

I've scheduled a consultation visit for tomorrow afternoon, with the procedures to be performed on Wednesday. The discernible sense of urgency in my dentist's voice was a little alarming, but there's nothing I can do about it but hang in there for the next 72 hours. I never thought I'd ever type these words, but I'm actually looking forward to having a root canal.

Because I'm presently distracted by the pain-related lack of sleep and dark thoughts regarding the pair of vice grips in my tool box, I'm going into low-content mode for the next couple of days.

First up, I'm going to write up a prescription for a topical lowbrow palliative...

(from "All the World's a Stooge," 1941)
...to be followed with administration of a soothing musical balm:

The Replacements - Can't Hardly Wait (from Pleased To Meet Me, 1987) - Wester-borg speaks the truth. I'm looking forward to Wednesday like it was Christmas, only with fewer presents and more pulpy nerve tissue scraped out my pearly off-whites.

he who waits is lost

So remember I couple of days ago, when I was whining about what I thought was just a bad head cold? I think it has turned out to be something a little more complicated.

Last June, when I made my long-postponed trip to the dentist, I was told that two contiguous teeth on the upper right-hand side were candidates for root canals, due to the fact that both had been cracked open and left untreated so long before being filled. My dentist wrote me up a referral for an endodontist, and was supposed to set me up an appointment for the initial consultation.

The thing is that, for whatever reason, I never got a call back from the endodontist. I didn't pursue the matter, since I had a dozen cavities that needed filling, my dental coverage was scaled back (modestly, but still) when I switched unions, and root canals are expensive. Better to nip the numerous small problems in the bud, I thought, rather than blow the entire year's benefit on a couple big procedures that, let's face it, rank rather low on the "things we prefer to experience scale." (My wife, who has had a root canal done by the same people not too long ago, says that the process is completely different these days, and that she fell asleep in the chair while it was being done. Even so, I notice she isn't hoping to undergo the experience again any time soon.)

Besides, I figured, how bad could things get in the eleven months before the next fiscal year? The rotten chompers were already sensitive, I had lived through the white hot pain of countless canker sores, and I was not going to be intimidated by some bush league toothache. Sure, my friend recounted some over-the-top horror story about a classmate of his whose jaw abscessed due to similar neglect, which made the poor kid hallucinate and speak in tongues, but my friend has similar stories for every health issue from hangnails to cerebral hemorrhages.

Despite all my rationalizations and calculations, the answer to "how bad could it be" turned out to be "pretty damn horrible, actually." I've spent the last 48 hours distracted to the point of near madness by a throbbing, itching ache in my upper jaw, the inflamed nerve endings broadcasting all sorts of nasty sensations through my sinuses, cheek, and throat (which is why I though it was a head cold at first). As much as a canker sore feels like a blowtorch being held to the fleshy tissue inside the mouth, it's an acute pain and can be blocked out with a bit of effort. Until I finally took my wife's advice about the wonders of ibuprofen (O, glorious OTC pain reliever!) this morning, I was reduced to a state where I began to consider the merits of unconventional treatment as practiced by Bruce Willis's character in 12 Monkeys (fortunately I couldn't remember where I put my hunting knife) or by the learned triumvirate of Howard, Fine, and Howard...


Bill Haley & His Comets - (Now and Then) There's a Fool Such as I (from The Decca Years & More box set, 1991) - Tell me about it, Bill.

The Upsetters - Toothache (from The Complete UK Upsetters Singles Collection, Vol. 2, 2002) - The only kind of toothache worth having.

is it safe?

Zero hour is rapidly approaching. Tomorrow at noon I have a long-postponed meeting with my dentist, and it’s even money whether a root canal or a very deep filling along the base of the bottom rightmost molar is an order – a real win-win situation.

The prospect of either has cast a dark pall over what should have been a pretty groovy long weekend, and I couldn’t even maintain my enthusiasm for a viewing of the modern cinematic masterpiece known as Convoy, Sam Peckinpah’s most personal and heartfelt directorial effort, on one of the Encore niche channels. The prospect of seeing an oily, shirtless Kris Kristofferson use C.B. lingo to taunt Ernest Borgnine while romancing a pan-fried and equally oily Ali MacGraw did nothing to dispel the dark clouds of dread hanging over me, which just shows how bleak my frame of mind is at the moment.

The sad thing is that all this could have been prevented if I hadn’t cancelled my previous appointment sixteen months ago. The tooth would have been filled before it reached the critical stage, and right now I’d be singing along with the dulcet tones of C.W. McCall without a care in the world.

There were relatively valid reasons at the time for my procrastination. I was sick of the hassle involved in getting to the dentist’s office due to the MBTA’s the poorly implemented switch from tokens to an electronic method payment. (The station where I got on the subway used the former and the one for the dentist used the latter, and none of the T personnel on either end had a clue about how to deal with cross-generational fare transactions.) There was also the fact that having had two to three fillings done per month during the year previous, my body had started to develop a resistance to Novocaine. (Edit: Fuck you, MS Word spellchecker.) It would take four shots of the stuff, minimum, to numb my mouth into a state where the drilling was only slightly bearable. (Hopefully that’s no longer the case.)

Hindsight can be so cruel. Whither be the oil of cloves that can soothe the taunts of mocking memory?

Specimen – Sharp Teeth, Pretty Teeth (from a 1985 single; collected on Wet Warm Cling-Film Red Velvet Crush, 1997) – ASF, Danse Society, March Violets, and now Specimen…I seem to have subconsciously fallen into goth mode these past weeks. I used to have a Specimen sticker on the back of my punk jacket until it cracked and peeled off and I replaced it with a Sex Pistols one.

C.W. McCall – Convoy (from a 1975 single; collected on Spy Magazine Presents: White Men Can’t Wrap, 1994) – Populism via Peterbuilt – only in the 1970’s.