Ballroom Blitz

after my alarm went off for the third time, signifying that it was 11:15am, i got up, put some clothes on and went outside to walk the dog to find that it was indeed raining sideways. no, seriously, that's what they call it: 'sideways rain.' i know, weird right? it wasn't raining particularly hard, more like a strong drizzle [oxymoron?]. but by the looks of the bay at what is normally referred to as the beach down the street, you would've thought it was a freaking monsoon. 'tumultuous' is the word that comes to mind. [i took a video of it on my phone, which i may upload to my other youtube channel tomorrow, but i can't be bothered right now.]

once i returned home with the sharp, high-pitched noise from the neighbor's house alarm [i guess, i still don't know exactly what it was], i took a deep breath and headed out to glen burnie to pick up the x-ray from my dentist's office. flimsy piece of paper tucked safely under my shirt, i ran out to my car like a weirdo, covering my belly to preserve the surely unnecessary evidence of tooth #19's extensive decay. it was off to the hospital for said tooth to meet its very, very timely demise at the hands of dr. allan v. garfinkel, d.d.s.

couldn't make up a more fitting oral surgeon's name if i wanted to.

to say that i was nervous as they explained to me that i would be fully conscious and not under a nitrous oxide induced analgesia would be a grave understatement. i think i cried a little bit, just thinking about how horrible my previous experience under the same circumstances was. i sat down and talked with dr. garfinkel about it, and he assured me that my previous dentist was an utter failure [that's for sure] and that he doesn't hurt patients. ever. i signed my forms, paid my co-pay and sat down in the room marked with a three.

now i'm not so melodramatic as to say that i thought i was going to die, but i'm also not so proud as to say that i wasn't afraid. i was very, very afraid, though admittedly irrationally so. this guy was a trained professional, he knew what he was doing, and i really had no reason to be afraid of him doing something that i'd had done on two other occasions already. but in my mind at least, this was different, because i'd had nitrous the other two times. laughing gas was my crutch, my refuge, my hopeful ally — but now it was gone.

after what seemed like an eternity of waiting through bad pop hits from the past three decades for the local anesthetic to take full effect, i entered into one of the most uncomfortable hours of my relatively young life. to say painful would be a lie, because it didn't really hurt aside from one point at the end where the infected bone area was disturbed. no, not painful, but definitely very uncomfortable. i must have sweat off a pound's worth of weight [and i could stand to sweat off a few more], and my fists were sore from clenching, but i made it through and the doctor said that my bone, my roots and my gums were fantastic.

but most importantly — i was fantastic.

the culprit of my crimes against facial comfort and general oral serenity gone, i left dr. garfinkel's office quite quickly, thanking him for his work with gauze packet and prescriptions in hand. the drive home was full of numb-faced relief, followed by a clumsy adaptation to the regimen of clindamycin and percocet. lovely, dizzying, high-inducing percocet. gauze, gauze, gauze. milkshake, pill, yogurt, salt water. makeshift frozen green bean icepack. rest. sleep. wake up to blog... sleep again.