As I’m sitting in the dentist office, with a mouthful of gauze and one tooth less than what I came in with, I’d expect to be in excruciating pain. I’d expect to be unable to talk. I’d expect to not want to drive myself home. But I’m not in pain, I can still talk just fine, and I’ll be driving my mother and I home. Such is the wonder of modern drugs.
Sitting in the operation chair was interesting. After the first (unsuccessful) shot at some form of machine-injected anesthetic, the dentist gave me what she called a ‘block’, via the normal ridiculously-large-but-somehow-necessary needle. By the time the bubble of anesthetic under my gum dissipated, I couldn’t feel a thing. She then used some sort of clamp to perform the extraction, which took all of 30 heart-pounding seconds (It’s all in my mind, I know).
I got two prescriptions from the dentist along with my post-operation instructions: amoxicillin (to prevent infection) and corcet (to kill the pain, should I need it). I’m not too worried about the pain (yet), since the nurse said that I might even be fine with just acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Heck, I might not even fill the prescription.
Now the road to [dental] recovery. My jaw bone needs to heal over, and my gums need to cover the exposed area. Should take at least a few days, if not a few weeks, says the nurse. God-willing, I should be back to 100% well in time for the move back to Connecticut.
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