7:44 p.m. - 19 March 2003
M is for Mouth
M is for Mouth
You know, I had about half an entry about the word Mandatory, and it just wasn't going where it was supposed to go, so I scrapped it in favor of an entry about my mouth. Yeah, I know, how exciting.
I ended up taking all of today off because I had to go to the dentist. The shameful admission of this entry is that it was the first time I'd been in a dentist's chair in five years. I don't have a good reason why it'd been that long, either; it was just sheer, unadulterated laziness on our part. But I chipped a tooth when Lee hit me on Sunday night. No, it wasn't on purpose; we were wrestling in bed and he accidentally hit my jaw. I was as surprised as he was when I spit out a chunk of one my front teeth.
Needless to say, it's been pretty sensitive for the last couple of days, and Lee has sagged every time he's seen me wince. Orajel has been one of my bestest friends, and today was the first day I could get in to see the dentist. No one here in town was accepting new patients, so I ended up having to go up to Virginia to see someone. I had one appointment at 10 for a cleaning and another at 11 to get my tooth fixed.
Since our car is apparently still not fixed, even after having given the dealership almost $1000 in the last couple of months, I dropped Lee off at work and then headed to the office. I got there obscenely early, and they took me back right before 10 a.m. I ended up having to have a full set of X-rays, and after poking around in my mouth for a while, the hygienist told me I was really lucky – I didn't have any tartar buildup that would have required extra cleanings. I do have two cavities on my back molars (my mouth is small, and apparently my toothbrush doesn't fit back there as well as I thought it did), but other than that, I'm in good shape.
I went back out to the waiting room just after 11, and waited for the dentist to see me. She was apparently running behind, but I had a book and no real urgency to get back to the office, so I didn't mind. They took me back to the chair around 11:45 and told me the dentist would be right with me. At 12:45, the dentist finally showed up. The filling itself didn't take terribly long; I have good enough insurance that the whole thing cost me $120 – and that's for all three fillings, including the two I haven't gotten yet – and I got a lovely shot of painkillers that rendered half of my bottom lip useless.
I had some trouble on the way home (some jerk wouldn't get over, so I missed the exit I needed to get home, and had to go out of my way to get headed the right direction), and just before I got back to town, I could tell the anesthetic was wearing off and my mouth hurt. So I called my boss and told her I wouldn't be back in the office until tomorrow. Since it was almost 2:30 by then, she didn't mind (what's the point of only coming in for 2.5 hours?), and I've been happily ensconced at home ever since. I'm still trying to get my email address changed everywhere it needed to get changed, and I cancelled our previous ISP, which is why I've changed my layout for now (my images were hosted on that webspace). I'm still looking for a layout I like enough to keep for a while, though, and I did go ahead and pay for gold membership, so I won't be moving.
This has been a very boring entry for AlphaBytes. I'm working my way through the alphabet backwards just because I can.
