alexist

Today was bad in a good way. What does that mean? It means that individually sucky things happened, but sucky things which will prevent suckier ones. ;-)

Let me explain: At 8:15am I phoned Dr. Lipman. I explained the situation to him (badly; I was still sleepy) and he told me to come in at 12:45. Now, my car isn't driveable at the moment (it's going to the mechanic's Monday), I can't drive Carly's as it's stick, and Mom won't let anyone else drive hers as it's leased. So Mom gave me a lift.

I had to wait almost half an hour, then Dr. Lipman had a look. He didn't see anything, but took an X-ray anyway. Result? I had an infection (ha, I knew it) and needed an apicoectomy (I'd already had a root canal). He helpfully phoned the oral surgeon (who's just down the road), and as luck would have it, he could take me right away.

Now, since I'm sure few if any of you have had an apicoectomy, I will explain it. ;-) It's also known as a root-end resection, and is performed when root canal treatment fails. It involves cutting through the gum to the root tip. This is then cleaned, filled, and sealed, and the gum sewn back up. Yes, it's gross. I was warned that occasionally, it can fail and you have to have the tooth extracted. I said, "well, that will be me". He assured me apicoectomy is 90% successful. Me: "That's a 10% failure rate. And with my luck...."

Since my mother had driven me, I could get general anesthesia. Yay! I got the IV needle AND nitrous, what a bonus. It's fabulous. I was high as a kite when I woke up. Forget driving, I couldn't walk or talk. It wore off soon enough though. ;-) Now I've got penicillin and Tylenol-3 with codeine, plus a "soft foods only" order. I complied with this by eating cheesecake. ;)

The surgeon said it was a good thing I'd come in that day--any longer and it would've started to blow up. That happened once before and I have no intention of repeating it!