mouth, TMI

I have a pretty high pain tolerance.
I have a mental system of "filing" pain away from my body and somewhere else.

But pain in my mouth is pain I absolutely cannot live with.

What started as an "hmmm, my back moler kinda hurts" Friday afternoon turned into, "kill me now!" Saturday morning, all weekend, yesterday and into today.

X-rays at the dentist yesterday morning revealed this as one (of four) of the problems:

Going to the dentist or any doctor really is an experience for me, because I don't implicitly trust what they say. I know there are times in my work where I wing it. Let's face it; I'm sure we all do. But if they wing it, there's a lot more at stake (like my life!) then a misspelled name or wrong digit.

So I felt like I was rude at my 8 a.m. appointment, and I felt bad about that halfway through. There were extenuating circumstances. I'd slept four hours last night, got up at 6, driven an hour to get there, and I was hurting.

I just didn't feel like myself.

When the dentist had me join him in front of the x-ray viewing light, I couldn't help but get a wicked grin on my face. I mean, if it's obvious to my untrained eye the problems I was having, what must he be thinking?

He told me not to eat sugar, which thankfully I don't really anymore.
He told me I needed to get my four wisdom teeth out ASAP.
He told me a week after that I needed to have a root canal on my moler, the one you see above.
He told me I needed two fillings and a crown on said moler.

Then he stopped and said, "So that'll be Phase 1."

I stopped listening and he didn't go into Phase 2.

Suddenly, my mouth has become a construction zone.

And it F'ing hurts.