Off To The Dentist Today

 I developed a toothache Monday and had just started a juice/water fast that day, too.

The same contributors to the toothache, questionable diet, poor sleep, stress over the election, were what tilted me towards embarking upon the fast.

The question in my mind was to do with whether or not you starve a toothache, or feed it.

I would find out at the University Medical Center that, to do nothing was not an option after the thing became abscessed and the side of my face started swelling.

I didn't really know this, and thus I guess I only escaped death by having given up after 3 days of home remedies (warm salt water, clove oil, acupressure, deep breathing, yoga stretches, more acupressure around the head and back of neck) seemed to only be postponing the inevitable.

I never want to be a cry baby and the one time in my life when I called an ambulance because I was struggling to breath, back in 2013, I apologized profusely to the EMT's who came and picked me up along the side of Decatur, where I had went, after coming out from under the wharf.

It was probably the dander from the feathers of a black caped night heron that came to visit me that August under the wharf which became emboldened enough to hunt for its rats within a yard of where I was trying to sleep (since the same crumbs and stuff that fell off my cardboard attracted the very rats that the thing was trying to make a meal of).

I blogged about that extensively, probably in August or September, 2013.

That time, my blood pressure of 190 over something assured the technicians that I wasn't faking, like I guess a lot of people do.

So it was when I arrived at the emergency room with my face swollen on one side enough so that my cheek was in my field of vision.

I assured them that I know they are busy with the virus and I wouldn't have gone there if I hadn't exhausted all other possible cures. They assured me that it would not have gotten better on its own.

I know they have to make general statements calibrated for the average person, just like the speed limit on a roadway is lowered so that even the worse driver can make the bend without crashing, and I almost took it as a personal challenge to try to get over the toothache using all the new age alternative methods at my disposal.

I'm not saying I am at the level of Jesus or the Buddha; but that the hospital staff probably would have said the same thing to either of them had the gone there with an abscessed tooth like mine.

But, I had dug the hole for myself by staying up for days at a time, drinking about a six pack of beer each night, and then making ill advised eating decisions; including grabbing some of the free food that some organization donates to Sacred Heart.

The stuff is actually pretty delicious after being microwaved for a few minutes on a medium setting; stuff like pulled pork with rice and corn, barbecued chicken, type of stuff. Stuff that the "normal" people eat. The normal people that all the drug commercials are aimed at on TV.

I wound up spending the whole night at the hospital. Monday is their busiest day;they said, and there were 90 something people on their list that night, plus a "trauma" victim or two came in and I was bumped back to the waiting room to make room for a car crash victim and then someone who was in a wheelchair that he was handcuffed to, being pushed by a couple cops.

I think it was someone who had left the scene of an accident but then realized how badly injured he was and went to the hospital where cops were stationed, waiting to see if someone who looked like his head had gone through a windshield arrived seeking help.

It made for an interesting night.

But in an hour I have to go and have the tooth extracted which caused the problem. It has nothing to bite against, since the tooth opposite it in my jaw suffered the same fate about 5 years ago.

I never pursued any dental work, not being sure how much my "Healthy Blue" insurance covers, and hoping that I would either come into enough money to be able to pay about $35,000 to have my natural teeth fixed up, so I could retain them. Or for them to come out with dentures that are computer modeled after the patients natural teeth using dental x-rays and a 3D graphical computer aided laser type porcelain grinder.

That is another idea of mine which, I am told, someone else has had, and in the near future dentures will no longer be one size fits all; people will be able to for instance, retain a gap between their front teeth like Madonna and David Letterman and Elton John have and basically look like they did when they were in their twenties, at least their teeth, that is...

It's getting time to go. I think I will get a Modelo Negro beer or two before I go there. I would rather not, since they might smell it on my and tell me they can't give me novacaine (sp?) because of its interaction with alcohol.

They would probably tell that to anyone, even the Buddha, though....

I'll proof read this and polish it up later...