Point Taken

Pound, pound, pound, double pound!

I was taking direct hits to the jaw with what felt like a ball-peen hammer. I rocked back and forth on the bed to avoid the pain but there was no getting rid of it. Quietly climbing out of bed so as not to wake my wife, I went to the kitchen.  There I took 3 Aleve and waited. The Aleve did nothing. Next, I found that by filling my mouth with warm salt water and sloshing it back and forth, the pain would subside only to return when it was spit back into the sink.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It read 1:15 am. Picking up the phone, I made a call. It went directly to the answering machine.

“Hello, this is Marty Mitchell. I need to see the dentist. I think my jaw is going to explode!”

That being done, l went back upstairs to lie down.

Pound, pound, pound, double pound!

That’s it! I can’t stand it. I’m going to the hospital!

Quietly climbing out of bed again, I dressed without waking Cheryl, went downstairs, put on some shoes, and left in the car for the hospital.

The Emergency Room that night was only sparsely filled in the waiting area. Since there were broken bones and knife wounds waiting for attention, the desk attendant put my priority at the end of the line even though as we talked, I could not keep my eyes from crossing.

“Can you give me an opioid pill while I wait?” I asked.

“The best I can do is a Tik-Tac honey. Now you just find a seat and we’ll get to you,” she said obviously thinking I was a junkie.

After an hour of rocking back and forth in my chair, a nurse came out and ushered me into a triage room.

“What can we help you with tonight?” she asked.

“I have a tooth ache and pressure on my jaw. I think it might blow. It’s unbelievable!”

I said this without actually opening my mouth.

“Ok, the doctor will be in shortly,” she said, and she walked out of the room.

Within minutes, the ER doctor entered looking like he had worked a tough shift already. His scrubs were messy, and he acted as if he had taken one too many sniffs of nitrous. After explaining that I had excruciating pain in my jaw, he took a metal rod, asked me to open my mouth wide and begin tapping my teeth on the pained side of my jaw. At the moment that I flipped my shoes across the room, he said he found the tooth.

“The best I can do is numb the area,” he said as he left to get a syringe of Lidocaine.

Now, here is where the Emergency Room differs from my dentist’s office. When the dentist brings in the syringe, I never see it. With a sleight of hand, he miraculously gets it in my mouth and numbs me using the smallest of needles all the while playing classic pop music through the sound system.

In the ER room, the doctor walked with a metal tray which he lay on my lap. Upon the tray lay the largest syringe I had ever seen — like it had possibly last been used to euthanize an elephant.

“Cripes! That’s the size of a bicycle pump!” I yelled.

To make matters worse, the hypodermic needle looked like it could easily inflate basketballs.

The doctor picked the syringe off the tray, pumped a shot of Lidocaine across the room hitting the wall. Over the speaker system came a request for security to apprehend a naked patient who was hallucinating from narcotics.

“I don’t know much about the nerves in the jaw but let’s give it a shot,” he said, and with that he tilted my head back and went in for the kill. And kill he did. Up and down the jaw, inside and out, at one point pulling the needle out and firing another shot at the wall. By the time I left the hospital, I stumbled on my lips all the way to my car.

Five hours later, I received a call from the dentist asking me to come to his office. As he drilled into the offending tooth and the infected root, the pressure was released . . . somewhat like opening the cap on a shaken bottle of soda. He lunged for the exhaust fan switch. The relief was instantaneous.

“Ahhh!” I sighed. “No more pain.”

“Well,” the dentist cut in. “Not exactly. Visits to the ER aren’t covered on your dental plan.”

Two weeks later I received a bill from the hospital for $500.00. The price I paid for not waiting seven hours for the dentist. My jaw felt fine but now my head hurt.

The moral appears to be: stick with the professionals in the field for the results you want. While it is true that you can take your sick pet to a veterinarian/taxidermist you may not bring him back home with the results you were expecting.

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