Toothache, tears and wacko birds

I have cried more over this toothache than I ever cried about leukemia.

It is like there is a direct pathway from my tooth to my tear ducts. I cried on the phone yesterday when trying to get an endodontist to take a second look earlier than my scheduled date of Friday. I cried when I called Melissa to update her, and I cried on the phone to a friend. I cried at 1:30 a.m. when I woke up the second after my oxycodone wore off.

I went downstairs, made tea, took an Ativan and two more oxycodone tablets of five mgs. each. Joe was still up, and at least I found some distraction in talking about Jacoby Ellsbury signing with the Yankees.

By the way, I am not taking oxycodone willy-nilly. Melissa (my NP at Dana-Farber), knows that I don't like taking it, but since it is the only pain reliever I can take given my history, she said to go ahead and take it to get over the hump.

I have been in dental purgatory for some two weeks. That is a long time to have a toothache. The latest is that my regular dentist said today that the tooth that is hurting (#3), needs to be opened up and have some kind of anesthetizing material packed into it. He said he is so busy he doesn't have time to eat his lunch and is tearing his hair out. Call the endodontist and have him do it, he said. I said I thought endodontists only did root canals, but he said this is not so. He said he could not help me anymore. So I called the endodontist's office, where the receptionist said endodonists don't do that, only regular dentists do. She promised that she would have her guy call my dentist and that someone would get back to me by the end of the day. Which. Did. Not. Happen.

Late this afternoon I called my dentist again. Each time I open my mouth to talk about this I start to cry. I said that I needed to be seen tomorrow and that I would bring the dentist his lunch if that was what it took. She put me on hold. Finally she got back to me and said that another dentist in the office could see me tomorrow morning. I have never been so happy to make a dentist's appointment.

I hope that my hopes are not dashed. As a backup, I am keeping my appointment with the endodontist Friday in case the pain is actually being referred from a different tooth.

For some reason it makes me feel better to mumble these words that John McCain used to describe the Tea Party:

Wacko birds.