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05 june 2000
----- Late last week, half-worried over a strange sore in the lower right back of my mouth that my soon-to-be-ex friend Don almost managed to convince me was oral cancer, I made an appointment to see the dentist this morning. Over the course of the weekend, the sore started to fade, I got an intense migraine headache, and the lower left side of my mouth started throbbing. So when I finally got to the dentist this morning, I had him look at both sides. One panoramic and two bite-wing x-rays later, my new dentist stuck a little camera-on-a-stick into my mouth and I saw my chompers magnified in all their glory on a trinitron monitor. It didn't look as bad as I had feared, although I wasn't expecting so much saliva. He showed me my two bottom wisdom teeth, both impacted, one still below the gumline. The culprits, so to speak. My upper wisdom teeth, although hanging just fine, weren't in much better shape, he explained. "We could do a lot for you here," he said cheerfully, "but I'm not touching you until you have those wisdom teeth out. That's where all your current problems are coming from." Less than an hour later I was on the other side of Santa Monica, sitting in an oral surgeon's chair on an "emergency consultation." I was explained the procedure, signed a surgical consent form, and was just about to head to work when the surgeon said ... "so, you ready?" "W w what, NOW?" I stammered. "When else?" he replied, an anxious look on his face. "I ... um ... currently have no insurance." Dreaded words in a doctor's office. "In between jobs?" "Kinda." Actually, I had accepted my new job offer about two hours prior. "Well, I guess we can wait." Still very cheerful. He wrote me an antibiotic prescription to take care of whatever infections were brewing in my impactions, and told me to call back when I was ready. I tried to keep my pace to a walk as I left the office. Of course, I could have just paid the $261/tooth (where do they get that number?) and gotten it over with today. The band would have killed me (imagine trying to sing at practice tomorrow night), my boss would have killed me (but who cares, I'm quitting, right?) -- I dunno, right now, I'm aiming for friday, insurance or not, especially if this throbbing mouth crap continues. It'll leave me the weekend to recuperate, and a pretty good chance I'll be back in tip top shape for the Luna Park gig on the 16th, albeit with four giant craters in my mouth. As soon as I got back from the surgeon's office, I emailed my notify list (which I'm experimenting in making a discussion list) asking if it was a bad idea to stay awake for the procedure. The responses were mixed, but I think I'm gonna stick with my initial decision to go with the local stuff -- I'm not the type of person who would want to sleep through such a momentous occasion. Tomorrow I'll call COBRA to see if they'll cover the extraction. If not, I'll call the surgeon's office to ask about installment plans. At this point, I just can't wait until the new job's benefits kick in. ~~~ I've got my new wireless network set up in the apartment, so I can go anywhere I please within a 300 foot radius of my bedroom and surf the new DSL. Tonight finds me in the living room, half-watching "The World is Not Enough" on the absent roomie's state-of-the-art home theater system. I'm kinda dazed from the whole tooth thing, not in much of a mood to write, more in a passive vibe ... think I'll surf for a while, take my amoxicillin, throw an icepack on my jaw, and try to fall asleep to this James Bond movie. 05 june 1999: didn't write : 05 june 1998: flight to burial : Gramma died this afternoon. I was at my desk when my pager went off. I've almost never get paged while sitting at my desk. The vibration felt like a knife in my abdomen.
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