Mushy, mushy, mushy mush.
Muddy puddles.
Quagmire.
GOO.
If I small child were to accost me at this moment (I always imagine interactions with small children commencing with some manner of accosting), it would pick up my brain and bounce it on the ground like silly putty.
Splat.
Kersplat.
Floop.
I'm left with thoughts that find themselves standing confuzzled at dead ends, scratching their directionless heads and wondering what the hell happened to wherever the hell they were going. Then they backtrack and end up going round and round roundabouts, never really reaching a sentence in one piece.
I'm reduced to making lame jokes and grateful exclamations.
Drugs. We do not get along. Not even a little bit. The things you do to my brain... and my stomach... oof.
I trembled and shook my way up to the 5th floor of Saint Mary's to have a wisdom tooth extracted on Tuesday morning.
I know everyone hates having their teeth messed with... but I REALLY hate it. There are few things I hate more than having someone else puttering around my mouth with poky power tools.
I had my first wisdom tooth yanked (in many pieces) out about four years ago. The painkillers made me unbelievably nauseous and I dealt with the brutal pain of an infected socket for two solid weeks by grimacing and being super grumpy to everything that moved (and most things that didn't). I could hardly open my mouth and the once simple act of inserting a spoon of yogurt into my face became an epic adventure (one of the less pleasurable kinds).
This said, I was not looking forward to having my second lower wisdom tooth removed. But I decided to get the guy gone because the other one had caused me so much trouble and I didn't relish the idea of trouble in Mexico because I prefer to deal with pain in places where a) I speak the native language and b) I'm not volunteering in someone else's home.
So I quivered and quaked (I wish the past tense of "quake" was "quook"...) and made my way into the oral surgeon's office. After I'd filled a novel of paperwork with my scratchy signature and cursed my teenage self for choosing to sign with my whole name instead of just my initials, I was handed a consolation "goodie bag" and dispassionately escorted down the hall and into the chair of pain. Where teeth would gnash if fingers and picks weren't in the way.
Goodie bag. What kind of goodie bag has a toothbrush and chapstick? This should not be allowed to be called "goodie bag". Nothing remotely good lives inside.
"I've never had an IV before," I told Dr. Nock as he swabbed my arm with alcohol.
What a dreadful name for someone who's about to f*ck shit up in my mouth. Nock. Might as well be Doctor Bludgeon. Or Quarterstaff. Doctor Sledgehammer.
"I'll tell you what's going to happen," Dr. Nock tried to soothe my frazzled nerves. And failed.
"I'm super nervous."
"Well, you'll feel a bit of a pinch here," the good doctor jabbed an IV into the crook of my left elbow.
"Yes, that was indeed a bit of a pinch."
"And you'll start to drift off in a few minutes. You should be feeling that now," he said as he adjusted the bag of fluid hanging ominously above my head.
"Yup... ooohOOO.... feeling... that... whaz...appen...in? err...."
"And when you wake up, you'll ask if we've even done the operation yet."
"Whatefer you... say... ha..."
And then I woke up. The unfortunately named doctor was nowhere to be seen and a nurse hovered with a wheelchair to my right.
"You're waking up now."
"Yeth... oohh... yeth, I'm waking up."
"Give me your arm and let's get you out of here."
"I... geth to rithe in a... a wheelchair? I'fe neffer been puthed in a wheelchair before. Tho many firthts today!"
The nurse (whose name I didn't catch) smiled patiently and helped me down from the chair of pain into the rolling chair of escape.
"We're giving you a prescription for percocet this time. The vicodin didn't work out too well for you last time, did it?"
"No... No... vicodin... dethtroyed me. Ooh."
My mom was waiting for me in Rosamund (the rotund, rose colored van) and the nurse helped me climb into the passenger's seat.
"Thank you tho much," I tried to smile. But failed. My swollen face wanted nothing to do with smiles, frowns or movement of any kind.
Maybe this is what it feels like to suffer from resting bitch face...
"I liked that doctor," I said to my mother as soon as the nurse closed Rosamund's door. "He wath really nithe and didn't thpend the whole time talking about how his ex-wife punched him in the fathe. Not like that other doctor who thpent three hours filling two cavities."
Mother dropped me off at Cathy's and then went to pick up my prescription of percocet from the pharmacy. Cathy immediately switched into mom-mode and I found the table piled high with my favorite kind of yogurt, tahini and honey. She made me two different kinds of teas and set me up in the TV room with netflix a blanket and an ice pack that she changed every hour or so.
"Cathy," I slurred, "I don't wanna get thick anywhere elthe."
This. This is why I didn't wait until Mexico to get my tooth yanked.
My mother arrived with my drugs about an hour later. I eyed the bottle distrustfully.
Are you going to make me feel worse than I already do?
I took half a tablet.
Nothing.
I took the other half.
Nothing.
This is reminding me of the cookies in Holland...
But I don't learn anything the first time around.
I took another whole tablet.
Finally, the pain in my mouth lessened.
Troy came over and kept me company for an hour. We watched an episode of Sherlock Holmes before he had to return to work. Then Cathy headed out to some manner of dinner party, but made sure to leave me with a phone, as much tea as I could drink, plenty of soup, and a barf bowl.
"So you don't have to run to the bathroom. Is it stuffy in here? Would you like the windows cracked open?"
"That would be amathing."
"Aimee..." she laugh-smiled, "you're so pathetic."
"I know!" I bitch-faced back.
Cathy left and the nausea kicked in.
Girl lost all her delicious Noosa yogurt. Which is significantly less delicious in reverse.
It was a miserable night.
Hunger.
Nausea.
Headache.
Toothache.
Nasal cavity stinging.
Exhausted, but hurting too much to sleep.
Gross.
I definitely felt a little sorry for myself.
And I definitely looked a lot of pathetic.
The next day was terrible, awful, ouch. Troy picked me up and took me to Bagels for a chat and a cuban cremosa. I managed to loosen up my bitch-face enough to read one of my plays with him, but my muddled, muddy brain never really got to working.
I'm glad this is such a patient guy.
Then my mom picked me up from Bagels and we set off to Montrose to meet a mutual friend for lunch.
"Is that a hitchhiker??!" I practically screamed as Rosamund jostled us out of town.
"Yeah..."
"Can we pick her up?"
"Do you want to?"
"I think so. I'd like to always pick up hitchhikers after my time in the Balkans."
"Okay, then," mom slammed on the brakes and Rosamund bumbled to a stop.
"Where are you going?" I leaned out of the car and asked the tired looking woman.
"South," she said without enthusiasm.
"We're going to Montrose. Does that help?"
"Sure," the woman clamored into the back.
I tried to engage her in conversation, but it was very clear that the poor lady just wanted to sleep. Which, after traversing entire towns in Albania and Serbia before finding rides, I found completely understandable.
We dropped off our hitchhiker and went to lunch with Diana. I'm sad to say that the pain in my face made me something a far cry from amiable with the woman for whom I have so much love and respect. I hated myself every time I responded abruptly or I didn't appear as enthusiastic about her life as I wanted to be... but man, talking through wisdom tooth pain is not a piece of cake. It's more like munching on a hornet's nest.
Diana wished me an easy recovery and a fantastic trip. I apologized for my surliness and thanked her for her time. Then we climbed back into Rosamund and headed down the road.
I found a letter from Diana on the seat. A hundred dollar check was folded inside with a memo written, "to follow your dreams."
"Whoa. Mom... I... I feel so damn loved right now. So supported. Oofta. This is wonderful."
We stopped for some ibuprofen at a pharmacy on the way out of town.
It feels so weird to be putting all this anti-pain stuff in my body. I'm used to only drinking peppermint tea. Gawd.
But anti-pain stuff helped quite a bit, and the rest of the evening was much better (even though my brain never did come around). Tonya came over for dinner and I had a bit of a sister night with Anna.
I woke up at three in the morning, nearly crying from how much my face hurt.
How is this even possible? Am I just super wimpy? I didn't think I was such a pansy. But I am. A pansy. What a depressing revelation.
I took a couple of ibuprofen and went back to bed.
Sara picked me up from Cathy's the next morning at ten.
For my tattoo.
"You don't seem nervous," she commented as we drove to Main Street.
"I'm in too much pain to be nervous. I can't be bothered with anything else."
"Right... I'm trying to figure out whether already being in pain will make this easier or harder for you."
"Guess we'll find out."
I'd planned on doing a whole post on the process of getting my first tattoo. But as nothing remotely unpleasant/unexpected happened, that's really not possible. The pain in my mouth so overwhelmed everything else, that the needles just felt like someone running a clipper a bit too close across my scalp/neck. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the distracting, buzzing sensation as Sara chatted with my tattoo artist.
Hilarious.
Here's my tattoo. A wandering albatross.
I'm sure just about all of you can guess why this is meaningful to me.
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