Sticks and Stars

Despite my intentions to the contrary, I wound up staying home from work today. I feel so guilty about it although I don’t know why because really, if there was ever a day where staying home was warranted, it was today. Not only did I feel like shit, but everyone who saw me immediately made this face of semi-frightened, semi-leery concern, so I think it’s safe to say that I looked like shit as well. And I still do, for that matter, but I’m feeling much better.

When I started calling around for a dentist this morning (I can’t believe I’ve had dental benefits for almost a year now and I have yet to find a dentist) every office I called kept referring to this one particular office (most dentists don’t take emergency patients who aren’t already established with them). Indeed, this particular office kept coming up first on my various search result lists as well, but I’ve driven past this office every day for a year and while I’m sure that the dentist is competent enough, the huge dramatic portrayal of Jesus dying on the cross painted on his “Dr. So-and-so’s Office” sign always turns me off just a little.

But alas, in the end he was the only choice. I tried to stare hard at the part of the mural that depicts Jesus and small children cavorting with baby animals, but my eyes couldn’t help but be drawn up, up, up to Jesus obviously crying out in agony, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

When I got there I found a bible sitting on the waiting room table and plenty of inspiring biblical quotes plastering the walls, but otherwise the office was okay. It was more like some elderly person’s overly full, cluttered living room (complete with fireplace and rocking chairs) but it was tolerable…or I was desperate, either way I was happy enough to be there. Just in case, when filling out my paperwork I opted to list my self a “divorced” instead of just “single,” knowing that my parenting status would come out sooner than later and deciding, after a few moments of pondering, that it might be less of a sin to be divorced than to never have been married at all.

The dentist himself was very…jovial. And jokey. And touchy. I didn’t care for the banter or the kindly shoulder massages, but he seemed professional enough (more or less) and I guess I prefer excessive jocularity over the cold superiority of some dentists who so clearly see through my defensive claims that, “I do floss…mostly.” In the end any concerns I had about the dentist were washed away in the tide of nitrous oxide and decorating shows on cable.

A dentist who is liberal with the nitrous oxide is all right in my book.

I demurely turned down his offer of pain medicine prescriptions and hoped that he saw it as my virtuous manner of attempting to suffer for my sins (he did not need to know that I already had plenty at home and figured that I will get more in a week when I go back for the real root canal).

I’m not entirely sure what he did to me, distracted as I was by painting techniques and lighting schemes and the unexpected hilarity that is commercial tv when high, but whatever it was knocked me on my ass and I sure as hell should not have been driving home after. But I did arrive home safely, and although I debated going in to work as I was determined to do (if I go in for part of the day I don’t have to count it as a day off), I collapsed into bed instead, and here I am, four hours later, feeling pretty good overall. My face still hurts and is still grotesquely swollen, but the overall pain is much, much less. I’m going to see if I can go medication free tonight (except for the antibiotic) and maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel mostly human…and hopefully I’ll look it too.

The real root canal is in a week…this time it’ll be two hours of nitrous and decorating shows. It does not seem like a good indicator about my quality of life that I am looking forward to a root canal.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.