Man, the food tasted so good.
I had dinner over at Margo's tonight. She's a writer for our paper and a damn fine cook. She fixed me a pasta dish I could actually eat. It was probably the first real meal I've had in more than 10 days.
I don't know who to blame for what happened — that restaurant downtown where I bit into something hard in a grilled cheese sandwich or just myself. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The restaurant needs to take better care as to how they prepare their food and I need to take better care of my teeth.
That hard bite into the sandwich led to a chain reaction and the pulling of three of my back teeth. I won't go into all the gory details here, because I'm feeling better and don't want to relive the horror again.
But I can kind of look back now and laugh at some of my rambling thoughts during my 10 days of misery. Here are a few of those thoughts that come to mind. . .
· With the left side of my face all swollen up, I still had a column to get out. I wrote a fairly decent one, I think, while in a lot of pain. Maybe pain makes me a better writer?
· I have a totally new appreciation for applesauce, soups and puddings.
· I'm a diabetic and, because of it, on the day of the surgery the doctor took me in right away. Diabetic membership does have its privileges.
· The oral surgeon told me not to eat or drink anything after midnight on the day of the surgery, so I didn't. When I got to his office, I was starving and thirsty. He gave me a bottle of apple juice to drink. Why the hell did he tell me not to eat or drink anything if it was all right to do so?
· Having teeth that hurt is a crumby way to lose weight.
· As the pulling of each tooth happened, the surgeon stated, "You're going to feel some pressure and hear some movement in your mouth." He said that to me three times and I'll be damned if he weren't right each time.
· After the teeth were pulled and after massive amounts of cotton was put into the left side of my mouth, I decided to try and be funny. I asked one of the nurses if I would have my pulled teeth to put under my pillow for the tooth fairy. Either she couldn't understand a word I was saying or she didn't appreciate my humor.
· My son took me to the appointment. After the surgery and with my face all numb and my mouth full of cotton, I went out to the reception area ready to go home. My son was nowhere in sight. Thinking the procedure was going to take a long time, he decided to go run some errands. So there I was in the parking lot, my face all puffed out and looking like shit, waiting for my son. People entering the doctor's office would look at me and run.
· A few hours after the surgery the numbness in my face started to wear off. I thanked god for Tylenol with codeine and I also thanked him for vodka and tonic. I had plenty of both that night and slept like a baby.
Knock on wood, this ordeal in my life is over. Lessons learned? A few more thoughts . . .
· Go the dentist at least once a year and get things checked out. Don't wait for disaster to strike.
· Appreciate the ability to chew food.
· Stay away from grilled cheese sandwiches.
· Save some of those codeine pills for later. If they make you feel better when you're in pain, imagine how there're gonna make you feel when you're doing just fine.
