Last Week...
and for most of the preceding week, I had the most unfathomable pain in the lower-left side of my jaw. After 7 days of trying like hell to ignore the increasingly obvious swelling, and rinsing regularly with salt water, I woke last wednesday to see that the swelling was now clearly visible through the skin of the cheek.

On opening my mouth I saw that in addtion to the generalised swelling, there was now a distinct and seperate lump, on the gum between two teeth, about the size of a marble. Not good.

Knowing that going into work looking like John Merrick's ugly brother was a passport to a day of ridicule, I decided to take matters into my own hands, locating a sewing needle, and girding my loins, I drove the needle down into the morass, and encountering little resistance, pushed on. Not too bad.

Now, with the offending protrusion holed, to apply pressure to get the gunk out.... I gave it a good hard prod, and promptly screamed the house down, this was obviously a dentists job.

Fast forward 2 hours and I'm in the dentists chair, while he explains to me that as a life long nail-biter, a piece of nail has become wedged in between two teeth, right down in the gum where no amount of brushing was going to remove it, and said nail had, in time, opened a hole in the gum, from whence the mother of all infections had taken root.

"no worries, we'll soon sort that" he says, as he and the dental nurse are donning aprons and full face visors, "qucik jab to numb the pain and we'll get going".
25 minutes of pulling, scraping, cutting, suction and grisly, rippy noises later, and I'm sitting up, while lovely Mr Dentist is proffering a heap of diseased, recently removed tissue under my nose, "look, I had to remove ALL that" gum to get it out".

Still, NHS, so it only cost £16.50. Can't argue with that.
(tyrefire2001 Is it a fast ship?, Sat 31 Jul 2010, 11:31, 2 replies)

YAY
for the NHS!
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Sat 31 Jul 2010, 22:43, closed)

so
do you still bite your nails?
(fai is rocking khaz modan server as of, Mon 2 Aug 2010, 3:01, closed)