L'hopital rule, part 2: drugs and dreams
We left off on Thursday night, when my pain had been steadily worsening and i decided it was time to start antibiotics. Thursday night was rough -- while 800 mg of Advil was still sufficient to allow me to function in such limited and basic ways as walking slowly, or carrying on simple conversations using basic vocabulary, it was no longer enough to make the pain subside sufficiently to enable sleep. So i think i slept a grand total of less than an hour that night, at a generous estimate, and in bursts of 10-20 minutes at most. I basically gave up around 5:00 and decided to take the day off. I was supposed to take another dose of amoxicillin at 6 am anyway,* and maybe i could kill an hour getting cleaned up.
(* When i started the antibiotics Thursday night, i'd dreamed up this complicated scheme to spread 4 doses out as evenly as possible over the course of the day while still getting 8 hours of sleep.. but hoping to get 8 hours of sleep turned out to be wishful thinking, and i wound up just taking them every 6 hours anyway since i was pretty much always awake..)
Day 0, Friday: A long, miserable shower, a smidgen of breakfast, a little working-from-home to distract myself.. all in service of making it to 8:00, when i could call the oral surgeon and tell my sob story about being in constant pain, not being able to sleep, and having a racquetball growing out of my jaw in hopes of getting my appointment moved up, who knows, maybe to today! Oh, the racquetball was something i forgot to mention -- i noticed while i was taking my shower that my face was seriously swollen. It kinda made me look like a boxer, and/or like Sylvester Stallone.
When 8:00 finally rolled around and i called the oral surgeon, they hooked me up with a much sooner appointment (yay!), still a week away (doh!). Perhaps i should have been more forceful with them about my feeling that this was Becoming Serious, what with the swelling and all. But on account of the pain, at least, i did convince the oral surgeon to call me in a prescription for some Vicodin. It didn't exactly feel like the right thing to just load up on painkillers and try to push through for a week, but i wasn't in much of a mental state to argue, and i thought maybe at least it'll get me a decent night's sleep, after which i can re-evaluate my situation and make some more sensible decision.
I should pause briefly to mention again that since the wisdom tooth extraction would take place under general anesthesia, i'd need a driver to take me to and from the appointment (even if it was walking distance), and probably someone (perhaps the same someone) to babysit me through the day and make sure i was recovering okay. So every time this appointment changed, i had to recontact my cadre of driving/caretaking friends and rearrange duties so as to fit everyone's schedule. Thankfully, my friends are awesome (hi Rob, hi Chris, hi Brian!), and this more or less worked out okay every time, but these appointment changes definitely come at a cost somewhat greater than just talking to the surgeon's office.
The rest of the day was a series of small, simple tasks, like responding to emails, walking to the grocery store, buying soft foods, and getting a nutritive smoothie at Eden, stretched out to fill the time between exciting events like needing to take more antibiotics, being able to take more Advil, and having my Vicodin prescription become available. Eventually i wound up at Skyland, Brian's apartment, where i was supposed to house/cat-sit for the weekend, feeding and administering insulin to the Kraken, my favorite cat in all East Liberty, with a small collection of soft foods, my remaining supply of amoxicillin, and a fresh bottle of Vicodin.
Night 0, first Vicodin experience: After i took care of the Kraken and let the last dose of Advil i'd taken clear out of my system, i decided it was time to bring out the big guns. This was my first time taking narcotic painkillers, so i wasn't really sure what to expect -- loopiness, drowsiness, warm fuzzies? At first it was mostly drowsiness, while i tried somewhat in vain to follow a couple of 24 episodes i had to catch up on, but most notably, the pain was now in control enough that i actually felt like i could sleep!
I conked out pretty much the moment my head hit the pillow, and i started having this bizarrely vivid dream that i had a new job at a new company, where mostly what i had to do was swallow a whole lot. Every moment, swallowing -- vaguely concerned that i didn't really know what else i was supposed to do, but pleasantly and warmly assured that as long as i kept swallowing, things would work themselves out -- the other non-swallowing stuff would come in due time.
My Swallow Co. endeavors were interrupted a couple of times when the painkillers wore off -- Vicodin, at least at the dosage i was taking, sadly doesn't last very long -- but i'm pretty sure once i took more and got back to sleeping, i also got back to swallowing. It's a good job, the pay is solid, and i really feel like i'm good at it, at least so far...
Once i actually woke up (or really, decided that further sleep was probably a losing proposition), i realized where all that swallowing came from -- i had this major lump in my throat that i just couldn't get rid of. Turns out it was my uvula, swollen up like a grape :/
And so the saga continues...