Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I'm at the university, right now, even though it's Spring Break and I doubt that my students expected me to keep office hours.

But when the endodontist who performs your root-canal is only a few blocks from your on-campus office, and you've got a pocket full of ibuprofen, enough to last you for the rest of the day, I figured why not? I'm good to catch up on some work, at least until the painkillers finish wearing off.

I was feeling a bit 'off' on Tuesday, with periodic discomfort from the tooth I'd just had filled at the dentist on Monday. However, I was feeling pretty good and not really paying attention to that tooth yesterday morning, until the first bite of my warmed-over pancakes with syrup for breakfast had my eyes tearing and me longing for someone to PLEASE punch me repeatedly in the face, because it would make a pleasant distraction from the pain!

After that, I kept having throbbing pain shooting right up into my cheekbone, made much worse whenever anything remotely warm or sweet got near my mouth, but bad enough at the best of times. A quick trip to the dentist yesterday afternoon had him referring me to an endodontist for probable root-canal, and suggesting I make myself free with the ibuprofen (or even mix ibuprofen and acetominophen) until they could fix me up.

Anyway, after less than an hour in the endodontist's chair this afternoon, I was good to go -- numb, but with the angry, red, inflamed nerve removed, replaced with a bio-friendly filling material down into all three roots, and with a temporary filling to tide me over for the next 1 to 6 weeks, until my dentist could fit me with something more permanent.

Fortunately, there was no infection -- just inflammation -- so no antibiotics required. I'm taking mega-doses of ibuprofen, now, and have a prescription for Vicodin which I can get filled if I need to.

But it's really put a crimp in the writing I'd planned to catch up on this week. Oh, well.