The Agony and the Fog

We're in California for a while, continues...

Yesterday was one of those days where the fog just settled into the valley and stayed there most of the day with the hills poking out. I thought it was beautiful and I don't even like fog.

Speaking of fog, I am also in a fog. A couple days ago I woke up with a jaw ache which by Friday afternoon had progressed into an agonizing toothache. I'm very annoyed with myself because at first I thought it was just a jaw ache from tension or clenching my jaw in my sleep and therefore didn't call the dentist. Friday morning it was obviously a tooth problem and the pain was unbearable. And of course my dentist is closed on Fridays.

I was planning to wait until Monday to call him but the pain reached the excrutiating point later in the afternoon (after our little walk in the forest) and I decided I needed urgent assistance. So I called the dentist who had done the root canal in that tooth many years ago. I would have called him earlier but I couldn't remember his name and thought I would have to wait until Monday to ask my regular dentist who it was. By some amazing memory fluke, his name just popped into my head around 4:00.

They were open on Friday but it was the end of the day and too late to actually go there. Scream. But the receptionist was extraordinarily kind and spoke to the dentist and then called in prescriptions for penicillin and vicodin for me to get through the weekend.

I hate vicodin. I don't know how Hollywood celebrities get addicted to it, it just doesn't seem like fun to me. On Friday the pain was so bad that the vicodin didn't have much of an effect. It just made me as high as a kite but my tooth was still throbbing. Very unpleasant. Then yesterday the vicodin worked a little better and I had a reasonably pain-free afternoon. Unfortunately, vicodin also makes me nauseous so by the evening I was a complete mess and couldn't hold anything down, even water. Pain, flushing, and mopping are not my favorite evening activities '-)

The fact that the vicodin is now helping with the pain makes me think the penicillin is having an effect. Hopefully the pain will decrease and I can stop taking the vicodin. I'm dreading going to the dentist tomorrow because this kind of pain can only indicate something really bad so I know I'm going to have to deal with some kind of dental nightmare this week. Scream.

Thanks to everyone wishing me well on Twitter, Facebook, email, etc, I really appreciate it. This nightmare will be over soon, I hope. I'll probably be minus a tooth but I'll get my life back '-)

Comments

[Jeremy]

Yeah Vicoden sucks! I think Jan needs some Percocet (less puking) or Oxycontin (passed out in a poppy) weee .. I hope your dentist doesn't have to put his foot up on the chair for leverage like mine did. Thats when you know something is not going smoothly. =0( I think that f'ing dentist of yours should have made an emergency office visit. So there!