Good vibes for your healing LM.
And DO post the audio of your bus stop conversation. 
Oh JEEZ LM.
Feel better fast. Been there, done that, it seriously, seriously sucks. But you'll get to keep your teeth if everything works.
And DO NOT, DO NOT try to drink water on that side once your periodontist takes the patch off. You won't believe how sensitive this is gonna be (It took me a year for that side to settle). My periodontist actually ordered me to take a swig of water, as soon as the patch was off. I was still in the chair.....
I literally saw stars, it was so $#@!!! sensitive. His point? Don't do that again!
I could have lived with a verbal warning.
Feel better....
I was joking last week when I mentioned what a sick individual you were under the McCain conflagration post. I had no idea you had undergone the Spanish Inquisition.
Get well soon.
But not mentally, just dentally.
I can really feel simpatico when it comes to that deep well drilling in the mouthy realms.
You made me sweat remembering that stuff.
I know that if there is a hell, there are employment opportunities for dental surgeons there.
My surgeons have all been very talented, but the pain is that type that icepicks the brain.
Glad it's over for you LM and that you can now joke a bit about it.
Gah. Get well soon, man.
sending many healing vibes your way LM.
your brother in dental pain
minstrel hussain
all the best "get better" vibes from me, too.
From your post it seems you can string a few words together despite the mental mirages, and that is a FINE, FINE thing.
take good care, now!
Feel better, LM! Enjoy your vikies and watch out for those new stitches.
Just make sure that when the Oxy scrip runs out, you don't send your maid out to score some more for you.
I suspect the consequences YOU would face are a little harsher than those faced by a certain corpulent oxy-junkie we all know and loathe...
Get well soon, LM.
Get well soon man.
That coffee looks amazing btw!
Cheers
hint for coffee in the morning:
i pour mine over two scoops of ice cream in a great big glass and slurp merrily away. (ok sometimes i gulp)
Longtime lurker, compelled to post:
Hope you are still progressing and finding that the pain and swelling are steadily decreasing. Because your surgery was in an area that doesn't have room for swelling, the pain sensors will trigger fast and furious. So as much as you can keep swelling down, that will help the pain to subside. Which means that you might consider taking aspirin, ibuprofen or naproxen instead of tylenol and right along with the Vicodin. Those all have anti-inflammatory properties. (If you are already taking any of them for any other reason, don't increase the dose or add a second drug unless your primary healthcare provider approves.)
Coffee is wonderful at all temperatures: the cooler you can tolerate foods and fluids, the more anti-inflammatory properties it will have directly on the tissues in your mouth.
But as your instructions probably noted - or should have - eat and drink foods and fluids at the most comfortable temperatures so as not to raise red alert signals to any of your tender, traumatized and healing nerve endings.
Finally: there is an animal called viscous lidocaine, which is a topical anesthetic. You might investigate whether it would be helpful to you and ask whether it would be appropriate to be prescribed.
Speedy healing, LM - nice to have ya back!
Annie,
You got to watch it with topical painkillers after surgery--they can destroy circulation to areas that need it the most. Most common example: they tell you to NOT put cortisone on an itchy wound that's healing for precisely this reason...
@ Jen: All drugs carry some degree of risk which is why I suggest asking the healthcare provider about it. However, in the example you cite, corticosteroids are different than anesthetics, and they have a different mechanism of action on tissue. Two different drug categories, but both can offer pain relief. Best to seek the advice of the licensed provider.
Apparently, my dreamy “La-la-la-la”-ing I thought I was doing in my head while watching the Fantasia-esque parade of cars was actually being pharmaceutically vocalized.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson: "Jesus...did I just say that?! Or think it? Was I talking...did they hear me?!"
If you start playing a game of chess that you think emerges from the bedroom wall one night...just roll over and go to sleep...trust me. 
What key? I'll just la la la right along with you 
Pooooor thang!!!! Dammit, pain sucks. I only glanced over your painful posts because.... well, because I was having dental experiences myself. Nothing like what you and Minstral Boy are going through.... however, it is on the LIST. Fuck. Root scaling and planing in a month or so I think, if I don't bail. I don waaannnnnaaahhhh.
All I had was bite evening up grinding one day and a drillout/buildup for a crown. I felt like someone had socked me in the jaw for days afterwards. Tomorrow I get the permanent crown...... and schedule for another. That's all.
I feel for ya man! On a vikie voyage after abdomanal surgery... I suddenly found a glass of water being shoved in my face and said, out loud, "no, thank you"..... then it all came into focus and it was my OWN hand offering the water!! Freaky shit. Called a friend to come "babysit" me for a few hours too. I agree about the recreational bit. Don't get that. Besides its dehydrating and makes me itch. Good for when its required though.
Glad you're feeling better!! Its just seems so barbaric the shit they do. But its done and you're on the home stretch so goooood for you. Get well, LM.
Sounds grim, but at least they've taken care of it.
Best to you.
I was in a hospital after surgery, and they forgot that I needed pain medications for 90 minutes after surgery. I could not ask for help cause they operated on my diaphragm which then made it hurt (intolerably bad) to breathe without pain medications. Then they remembered "Oh yeah that guy with the nurse light on that just got out of surgery probably wants his pain medications" but by then my pain was out of control. Then, they forgot about me a second time after I rang, for 60 minutes. Then I got an IV drip with a button you could push every 15 minutes. I got trapped in some nightmarish patriotic esher world every time I closed my eyes, then I would open them and be totally freaked out to be in the hospital. I was in the psych ward because the hospital was too full (which is why they made the mistake) and had to stay an extra night because the morphine made me hallucinate, bad. I'm no slouch when it comes to mind bending hallucinogens, but that morphine scared me really bad. Please just give me the ketamine instead.
I think most people who take opiates "recreationally" are self medicating emotional pain, not having fun.
I hope you feel better soon and I'm glad to hear you got to partake of some of Brazil's finest coffe.
LM-wishing you well and good health and more sassy writing all the way from Idaho!
Agreed about the nasty side effects of those prescrip painkillers. Take care...
(I do have to say, I haven't noticed any craziness creeping into your posts...you're always spot-on rationa.)
good to have you back, I was about to organize a search party.
sounds all very ouchy to me... glad it is mostly over.
Mama hasn't noticed any craziness creeping into the LM posts? She missed the McCain BBQ post I bet.
I'm lookin' for my copy of "Chicken Soup for the Pissed Off soul."
So far, no luck. I mighta wore it out, reading it. :o)
Glad to hear you're feeling...well, "better" doesn't sound quite right, but "on the road to recovery" might do, eh?
I can definitely sympathize w/the interesting reactions to prescription narcotics bit--I had major abdominal surgery about 9 years ago (lost a foot of my sigmoid colon due to hereditary diverticular disease), and got the standard PCA, or patient-controlled analgesia...just hit the nice little button and get another dose of morphine, although you could only do it in 6-minute increments (usually I wasn't riding it THAT hard, but the option was there). While it definitely helped the pain, it didn't exactly aid and abet my communicative and cognitive skills...
...It's 2 days post-surgery, about 8 a.m., and I'm lying there in my hospital bed at Mass General, TV remote in my hand, probably drooling slightly, and watching...the Teletubbies--something I would NEVER watch in a chemically unaltered state, I assure you. Approximately 95% of my brain is in a fluffy little fog cloud of "Awwwwwwwwww...it's so CUTE!" major squee, while the other 5% is perched on my shoulder, shaking its head and muttering "Dude...this is FUCKED UP!" And let's not forget that the evening of the day I was discharged, loaded up on Percocet, I actually got online and participated (well, attempted to participate) in a live chat session with Pamela Des Barres...don't think I humiliated myself too badly in the process, but that was purely a matter of luck, not lucidity. I do remember at one point in the hospital thinking to myself "hmmmm...sleepy, sweaty and stupid...you know, if heroin is anything like morphine, I am SO NOT INTERESTED!"
Sorry, but I just don't get the thrill of abusing opiates, and I still can't get over that people actually WANT to feel like that for fun... *wanders off, shaking head*
Hi LM,
Wishing you a speedy recovery. Had dental surgery myself and boy was it painful especially since I think the
dentist screwed up. Ouch.
Thanx a lot LoLo!!! I was just about to make that appointment with my dentist when I read this shit - now I'm spooked for another six months. Everytime I've ever gotten the nerve up to go skydiving I've read about, or seen on the tube, some horrific 'chute-not-happenin' accident. Portents and muthaf***in' omens - dentists and parachutes...
BTW - give this ambrosia brew made of full-bodied (Pam Greer-style) Black tea and aromatic spices a try:
Masala Chai Tea (Rishi Tea Company)
- buy it from Amazon.com - get yourself a nice little tea press/pot and some heavy cream and get naked!!! You'll feel better, I guarantee.
No gas? are you nuts...
hope you're feeling better soon.
don't forget the non-laxative effects of those painkillers (it's what did Elvis in.) too bad on the no spicy foods thing, since eating a bunch of jalapenos is nature's way of opening the gates.
I'm so glad I decided to put off my extraction/bone graft/implant surgery to get a second opinion.
Swift healing to you, LM.
I had to get out of bed and turn the computer back on to share this single sentence that opens Virginia Woolf’s essay, “On Being Ill.”
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkle with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above out heads and wake thinking to find our selves in the presence of angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm-chair and confuse his “Rinse the mouth – rinse the mouth” with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us – when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.
Glad to see you posting again.
Forget the Dunkin' Donuts swill and get yourself to Porto Rico Coffee on Bleeker Street. (portorico.com) They've been roasting and blending coffee for a century and have an amazing variety. Their ESPRESSO CENT'ANNI is the smoothest espresso roast I've ever had and they have just started to offer an aged organic mountain Gayo Sumatra That I would love to try.
Apologies to V. Woolf and readers for obvious typos in her quote -- late night blues.
I just had my first filling for a cavity done, at almost 40. (I had four major cavities occur eight years ago, but they were in the wisdom teeth, which were scheduled at that point for extraction ANYWAY due to my dentist at the time of eruption misjudging their size, and thus the four cavitated teeth were pulled from my mouth.)
My father has had six root canals. I am almost waiting for him to have to go through this, because he's got the worst oral health control skills of any adult I know (he brushes daily, he claims, but somehow, every time he goes to the dentist they find something new wrong), and the worst discipline as well. If he gets this done, he will ignore most of the doctor's instructions, I am quite sure, and then I'm going to have my mother camping on my sofa to not have to deal with him.
But at least I know about it in advance!
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