Goodbye Old Year!

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm ready to wrap this one up. And in order to make sure the new year can only improve, I had a tooth extracted today. How ridiculous is that?

My toothache became unbearable on Tuesday night and when I saw my dentist on Wednesday, he was concerned it was going to require a root canal. He had put in a temporary filling on Tuesday but the pain I had that night was a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10. He sent me to an endodontist (super nice guy who was really patient and caring) who squeezed me into his schedule that morning only to discover it was a different tooth causing the pain, not the chipped tooth with the temporary filling. Since one tooth was on my upper jaw and the other directly below it, it was not easy to tell because my whole jaw hurt. He began the root canal but when he got the old filling drilled out he found the tooth had a horizontal crack (which he showed me in a mirror -- Yuck! And fascinating!) which meant there was no root canal -- just extraction. His office called to try and find an oral surgeon but they were either at lunch, closed for the week, or booked up since high school kids get wisdom teeth removed during winter break.

I went home with the painful tooth packed with some bondo-like stuff that stabilized it enough to relieve most of my pain. He also gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and one for a pain killer. God bless him. That afternoon I got hold of my original dentist whose office found me a spot with an oral surgeon this morning who had a cancellation. God bless the kid who cancelled. Today I met the oral surgeon who removed the tooth in question while I had a local anesthetic. Wowza. That is one nasty job he has there.

He was a really nice guy (pretty cute too) who was joking about his wife and work and going to the gym. His assistant was also nice and they made it a lot easier. But it took a lot of strength to pull the dang thing out, and that was after it had to be drilled and broken some more. Rather than a simple extraction it ended up being a surgical extraction, whatever the heck that means. Then he prescribed Vicodin (I think) which I picked up on my way home. I've been lying on the couch ever since. Goodbye Old Year!

I'm anxious to see if I end up with the hollow cheeks of those super models who have molars extracted in order to get the look. Probably won't happen with one molar, huh?

Our house guest left today and he was really sweet. He's a great brother-in-law and I enjoy his company. It will be good to have the house to ourselves again though, and put things in order before heading back to work next week. First thing we need to do is take the Christmas tree down. Yuck! And not fascinating at all!

Okay, in the pretty darn awesome, saving-the-best-for-last news department, my daughter is expecting again in August, right about the time of R's birthday. With that one little event on the horizon, the new year is already stacking up to be terrific. I'm a very, very lucky woman. With one less tooth.