I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
I had a toothache. Hell, don’t we all sometimes. Went to the dentist and one of my lower Molars had to come out. There and then.

So, extraction it was. 7 injections it took. After the 7th she told me to sit in the waiting room to allow it, them, to take enough effect, I started to panic that my throat would close up due to and overdose of anaesthetic. Swallowing became an audible sound to all around me as panic started to set in.
However, the extraction went ok. Didn’t feel anything. Tooth out. Cool. Got the info on how to look after it and on a Wednesday afternoon, went home to rest.

It hurt a bit the next 2 days, but felt worse on Friday. But then of course it did! I just had a tooth wrenched out of my jaw with a big pair of forceps. I slept fitfully Friday night and woke up in horrible pain. Figured I would spend the day chilling, watch Saturday Kitchen, other assorted rubbish and eat paracetamol and ibuprofen every 2 hours. Shit, it hurt, really bad. Figured I should stop being a pussy and get on with it. It would feel better soon. Right?
By Sunday afternoon I’m crying like a baby, crawling round on the floor. Eating tablets by the handful and calling NHS direct. I get the advice that it’s normal after an extraction to feel pain and feel like a ridiculous big girls blouse for calling in the first place.
Sunday night. I’m sweating, incoherent, crying, talking to myself in a pathetic ‘What’s happening, I think I’m dying, I’m so scared’ kind of way, and have swallowed enough medication to surely be considered a suicide risk.

Monday morning get on the phone to the dentist. There is NO FUCKING WAY that woman is not giving me an appointment right there and then. Then after sobbing, pleading, begging, crying, threatening her with my imminent death. Threatening HER with death. I somehow find myself at the surgery.

Lovely dentist turns to me as I open the door ’How are you doing then. Oh. Are you…?
‘Help me, please, help me’ and collapse onto the end of her chair.
Not my proudest moment ever, but I am so pale, she can almost see through me. And I’m drenched in sweat.
She helped me into the seat and had a look.

I had ‘dry socket’. It happens in about 5% of extractions, particularly in the bottom jaw. The clot of blood that forms in the extraction hole, between the bone and the gum that helps the connective tissue to heal can become dislodged, or not form at all, leaving no protection, and exposing the bone and nerve endings leading to inflammation.
Or, to a hoard of angry mouth Numbskulls with red-hot pokers and ice axes. All intent on burning and digging their way through your bone and into the side of your face.

The only help they could give was a good clean out, and to stuff the offending hole full of gauze covered in oil of cloves and zinc oxide. Which lovely dentist lady did to the sounds of me moaning.
As awful as it sounds, the relief was almost immediate.

It still throbbed awfully, but I cried. I sat, in front of my dentist, and cried. When she had finished I stood up, and fell over.


Still. Turned out nice in the end.
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Wed 4 Aug 2010, 3:12, Reply)