Had My Tooth Pulled The Other Day!
Had a tooth pulled the other day, gotta rant about it…
So last Saturday morning my back molar started hurting. Not having insurance means, there’s nothing I can really do about it. Since I don’t really have the money to pay cash. I just dealt with it. However, after nearly OD’ing on Motrin, Tylenol and orajel, I had no choice but to see a dentist.
So I went in Wednesday. It was hurting pretty bad. They took an xray and said I had two choices, they could do a root canal or extract it. “How much will the root canal cost?” I asked. The dentist said, a minimum of 1000 bucks. “How much will an extraction cost?” I asked. He responded with less than 200. “Extraction it is!!!”
So with that, they started to numb me up. They worked really fast. Normally when they go to numb you in my experience they spray some stuff around the gums, wait a few minutes then start with the injections. Here, they put some oraljel looking stuff on two long q-tip things, pulled them out and started with the needles. To my surprise it was numb enough. But then, the dentist says that this last shot is gonna hurt because he has to slide the needle straight down the gum between the tooth to make sure he gets down below the tooth. OMG, he wasn’t lying. I twinged a little bit at that one but in a few seconds the paid was gone and 5 minutes later he was twisting, turning and pulling on my tooth.
At one point he paused for a moment and I asked, the best I could, with only half my mouth working. “Can I see the tooth when you pull it, I want to eye fuck it for minute.” They all laughed and another minute or two later I was staring at my tooth. I flipped it off with both hands and felt better for doing it!
Now, I call my dad because I need to go to Costco and I don’t have my card. I was told the prescriptions would be cheaper there. Dad shows up about 20 minutes later and by this time, the medication was quickly wearing off and the right side of my jaw was starting to hurt worse and worse. We decide to take his car to Cosco and come back and get my car after I’ve had the drugs.
By the time we get to Costco I can barely open my right eye and my jaw is hurting beyond belief. It hurt so bad, I couldn’t stand it. I am fighting back nausea, dumb people keep stopping in front of me so I almost run into them and all I can think is that I’m just gonna start hitting fools. Finally we get to the pharmacy. Some dumb blonde chick is giggling with the pharmacist about everything under the sun except her prescription. It has to be so obvious that I am in pain and they’re just chatting away. Finally she leaves and we approach. I hand her my scripts and she asks for my license and hand it to her. Even getting it out of my walled hurt. She takes another minute typing stuff in to the computer and then says, “It will be at least 90 minutes.” I blurt out, “Are you shitting me!” She seems clueless as to my reaction and we leave.
My thoughts now are to get home and down some Motrin and hope for the best. It sounded so easy in my mind as I thought about it. I had noticed that the 15 FWY south was stopped on my way to the dentist and so did my dad. He takes side streets back. We start down a street next to the FWY that parallels it. All is well until without warning the road is closed. Now we have to drive all over side streets trying to get around the road closure. Took well over 30 minutes to get home.
I exit the car and walk as fast I can tolerate and grab my Motrin, down 4 of them and just sit on my bed rocking slowly like fucking Rainman. To my surprise after about 15 minutes the Motrin is taking the edge off. It still is killing me but I don’t feel the urge to throw up and then run into traffic.
I eventually get my drugs and my car. It’s still tender and the bottom of my jaw is a little swollen but I guess that because the infection or whatever, the penicillin is going to take care of it.
What surprised me was how much it hurt. I lost all sense of humor and that’s never happened before. I’ve been shot, stabbed and even had my heart broken a few damn times, but that damn tooth extraction aftermath took the cake. I couldn’t even make a joke. Just spent the time rockin’ like Rainman until the drugs kicked in. But, the moment I started to feel better I started laughing at the whole thing. Mocking myself doing the Rainman and all the delays in getting my drugs, road blocks, roads closed, a two hour wait for a prescription, it was so comically ironical.
