graceland's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Different kind of pain Today involved a lot of pain. I went for the dental surgery that I've been putting off for over a year. Note in hand from cardiologist letting the oral surgeon know that I'd been approved for the surgery and the anesthesia and that he shouldn't be surprised if my heart rate was higher than normal. The surgeon, concerned by the note and my rapid heart rate condition, put me immediately on the monitor and even though my pulse was the lowest it's been in weeks - under 100 - he decided not to give me general anesthesia. Instead, he was going to give me novacaine. Do not, under any circumstances in your life, ever agree to this. I didn't seem to have a choice and here I was, a year after the initial diagnosis, in pain and having taken the day off to get this taken care of, so I didn't see an option other than moving forward under this doctor's care. The upfront was bad enough, because although I could feel the action of the doctor cutting through my gum to my jawbone and then folding my gums down, there wasn't actual pain. I could just feel the incision and movement. And I could feel the reverb of the instruments - more drills than I've ever seen in my life - drill through the outside of my jawbone and through to the otherside, without actually pentrating the inner palate. I actively worked at remaining calm. I thought about beaches and happy places with everything I had because I was connected to a heart monitor and the doctor warned me that if my heart rate got too high, he would terminate the procedure; there was no effing way I was coming back to finish this. I wanted it done. Fortunately, the assisting nurse accidentally unplugged the monitor during the procedure and the doctor didn't notice until the end. The end was where my body decided to deviate from my mental happy place. The local wore off as he was closing me up. There was nothing I could do. So as he stitched my gums from the bottom through to the inner palate and over my teeth, as he pulled each thread up, my entire body lifted out of the chair with each motion like I was a magician's assistant. On the second or third to last stitch, my wall broke and I began to cry. Silent tears that a nurse mopped and stroked my hair as he continued to stitch and I cried. The pain was incredible, but I wasn't crying from the pain, I was having a full-fledged anxiety attack. The doctor understood because we talked about my official-unofficial diagnosis prior to the surgery. The nurses were confused. They were fussing around me and trying to pull back my hair and rub my back - a natural reaction to someone who is crying - not the thing to do when I'm having an anxiety attack. What I've learned at this point is that the attacks get worse when people stop and focus on me, because I become embarrassed. I can't control them as is, I desperately want them to stop when they occur and because I can't stop them, I get more upset. Having one in front of people makes the embarrassment even worse. I went to the bathroom and was able to pull myself together enough to come back and complete my paperwork. Once outside, the attack subsided and the pain set in. I thought I might throw up at one point. I looked in a mirror and my mouth looked like Fight Club. At this point, the pain has subsided thanks to some medication, but my face has blown up to epic proportions. I look like I got the shit kicked out of me. I anticipate that by tomorrow the whole thing will be bruised, which will be a nice match to my trackmarked, black-and blue arms from all of the recent blood work. But I'm alive. And the infection is gone. Thank God. When the doctor got in there, he found that it had spread through several teeth, which is why it took longer than the local lasted and hit some areas the local hadn't numbed. James Frey missed the mark on his description. Or maybe mine was different because they drilled through the jawbone. This pain was extraordinary. Almost primal in it's basic intensity. I never want to feel it again. 9:59 p.m. - 2006-05-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||