Heavy days

What is it that makes certain days so much harder to get through? Could it be something as trivial as a bad tooth? Is it the antibiotics? Or the infection? The fight inside my body?

Or is it finishing The Shepherds Crown? Because now it really feels like Terry Pratchett is dead. Like The Discworld is dead. Like the portal to that place is gone and lost forever. And that place is one of my favourites. I love his last ten or so books. I like all of them but they did get better and better.

My feckin tooth. Let me tell you about it. In may, while in England, I got a crazy infection in my jaw. I went to a doctor who gave me antibiotics and told me to see a dentist as soon as I got back. I did, they immediately pulled out a wisdom tooth and gave me more antibiotics. They also told me I needed a root canal. However since I was moving to Denmark social services didn't want to pay for it.

So I moved to Denmark. I tried to figure out if I could still get the root canal in Sweden - if I paid for it myself - but I never managed to find out.

So the problem was that "me paying for it myself" meant that Chris pays. I knew that I had to find a dentist, my tooth was hurting more and more, I couldn't eat or drink anything colder than room temperature but I kept putting it off. I knew it was going to cost.

Finally I called the closest dentist. Just around the corner. I got an appointment and went in for a consultation and x ray. Yes, I needed a root canal. It would probably take a couple of go's. Fine. I came in for the first step of the root canal last week, got an injection of anaesthetics (the thing that makes you numb, not the thing that makes you fall asleep). They started to drill. I screamed. It was horrible. More injections. More drilling. More mind shattering pain. I was crying and apologising. They told me not to worry, we would try again on Monday.

On Monday morning I took a diazepam and a citodon. I went in, had 5 injections of anaesthetics (one in my jaw and the rest around the tooth) and then got to wait more than 30 minutes for them to kick in properly. Half my face was completely numb but, of course, the second that drill touched my tooth it felt like an axe hit my lower jaw. I was crying again. They stopped, because there was nothing more to do.

They told me to call my doctor to see if there was any way to figure out what was going on with my anaesthetic receptors, or something (the diazepam had me pretty lost at this point). I called my doctor and they said they could not help me at all (they literally said "this is not our problem" and I said "that is not helpful at all" and hung up). I called my dentist again and they called my doctor and then my doctors office called me and told me to come in an hour later. I slept for 40 minutes and then went to see my doctor, who talked to an anaesthetic...ologist? She told me that there was no way to find out why the anaesthetics didn't work (they had worked before, I have several teeth that have "mendings" in them) but they were confident that it would be possible to put me under (the only other time I've been under anaesthesia - the sleep kind, not the numb kind - was when I was 12 and had to pull out a tooth that hade grown out in the roof of my mouth, super freaky. The thing was that I got a double adult dose and it still took me hours to fall asleep). A lot has happened in medical science during the last 20 years, according to my doctor.

So. I'm sure my doctor told me some more stuff but I was too woozy to understand much. I went back home.

On Tuesday I didn't call anyone. In the evening I realized that I probably should have, but I wasn't sure who.

On Wednesday I called my dentist. They said that they can't do anaesthetics (the sleep kind) so I had to contact a specialist-dentist. I tried to process that information but felt confused and had no idea how to find a specialist. A while later my doctor called me (maybe she's a bit psychic?) and told me where to call and what to say. Today I called that specialist and got an appointment for a consultation for Monday. So we'll see what happens after that.

Until then I'm still in pain and my half-drilled tooth is not making me happy at all. My face is still swollen and everything feels completely horrible.

BUT! I have gotten a time at the psychiatry!