Extraction Inaction

Week Twenty-two: Sunday 25 February – Saturday 3 March

I don’t know what a bear with a sore head looks or acts like. I imagine much like anyone with a sore head; I have my doubts that there has been any research to prove that bears are worse with sore heads than any other creature. And anyway, a sore head is a stroll in the country on a warm summer day compared to the hell that is toothache and tooth extraction.

Having supped malt whisky all day Sunday to alleviate the pain, I phoned for an emergency operation first thing on Monday morning and was given an appointment for the next day. That was a relief, but not from the ache, so it was back to the malt whisky. Having your first swill and swallow of malt at 8.45am and continuing every half hour or so for the rest of the day is not just a recipe for alcohol dependency, it renders you pretty incapable of much else by mid-afternoon. But what other choice did I have?

Having got through Monday, I was all set on Tuesday to get the tooth out. Only problem was the appointment was not until 11.30am and I couldn’t risk touching anymore whisky as I was going to have a fair whack of anaesthetic at the dentists. What to do? Suffer the pain; it was only a few hours after all.

It was hell, no exaggeration. The previous four days I had coped with a mixture of first pain killers, then whisky, then both. I had forgotten just how bloody painful the toothache was. I agitated and agonised through the morning, then rushed off to the dentist way before time.

When I finally got called in to the surgery room I was begging the dentist to inject me before I had even sat down. It took about five minutes for the anaesthetic to kick in and from that moment on I was quite happy; the dentist could have done a lot more to me than just take a tooth out and I would have been nonplussed.

The extraction was not too bad; it was a bugger of a tooth to get out (aren’t they all), but I felt nothing and was simply relieved.

By Tuesday night I was beginning to feel the effects of a mouth, jaw and bone that had been violated … more painkillers dealt with that. By Wednesday my mouth was not healing as it should and by Thursday I had an infection in the hole where my tooth used to be. Off to the doctors this time, to get some antibiotics.

So much of last week was a bit of a write off for me; I got little work done and was miserable most of the time. And, in the true art of misery, I passed that lack of bonhomie on to my wife and daughter. Luckily I am blessed with a wife from heaven and a daughter to match.