Emergency procedure

Tuesday 6/17/25

Monday was a mostly lost day. Last week--I believe it was Thursday--I awoke with pain in what I believed was my last molar on the left side of my mouth. I thought this was likely do to something I did while sleeping. I have to wear a night guard, because of my stress and the hell that is my life because I was staring to wear down my teeth with grinding. I'd fallen asleep without the night guard, and thought there was a chance I cracked my tooth. I went to work.

And continued working--with stops for running stairs--with this pain coming and going. Sometimes it was fine, other times not so fine. I ran those twenty circuits in the Monument on Saturday and walked three miles and did 100 push-ups. Sunday I ran 3000 stairs at City Hall--and did 100 push-ups--because I wanted to go to some films at the Brattle.

But then I had more of an issue Sunday night. I was basically up all night. Which isn't that unusual--I can go a long time without sleeping, sleep some, and then carry on, because of my regimen and discipline with everything else. But that will usually be because I'm doing something, but it can also be because things are so horrible and I am thinking about whether I should continue or not and I have no hope and I can't sleep. Physical discomfort is different, though. There were the two weeks of the pneumonia in 2016. Didn't get much rest then.

The pain was persistent now. I had a dentist appointment scheduled for a week from this Monday for a cleaning. I had thought I'd ask my dentist--of whom I am a great fan--about it then, but come five in the morning, I left him a message at his office, detailing my situation. He called and said he could see me at noon.

When he came out to get me, he said that I looked to be in pain. I couldn't pinpoint where the pain was emanating from by then. That whole side of my mouth hurt. The thing is, I have an ungodly tolerance for pain. My entire life is pain. It's what I know as far as the living of my life goes. Right now. And it's been that way for a long time. And yet, there is such joy in so much of my work. It's because these things are separate. Well, the finished work is itself separate. I am story--not autobiography.

He checked lymph nodes, mentioned that my cheeks were red, then showed me a mirror so I could confirm this. They were red. I'm outside a fair amount. I don't use sunscreen. I know. If I was sitting at a ball game or at beach I would. I'm a Portuguese--we are swarthier.

He had this kind of metal implement, and he started tapping teeth with it. Well, we knew when he got to the right tooth--what is called tooth number 20. It's on the bottom, on the left. He took some X-rays, and then said I needed a root canal--pronto, because it was pretty bad and I must have been in a tremendous amount of pain.

He knows a guy. Phones this guy's office for me. Says I can go over there now. My dentist is someone that some would think is a strange man. I trust him completely. He's passionate about dentistry. He'll just start waxing poetic about it. I don't even know what his name is because it's so long that no one can pronounce it so he goes by Dr. First Name. It's on the sign outside his door. His kids won't listen to him. He abhors screens--as in phones. Once he said I looked like I put on weight. That concerned me. A couple visits ago he said I looked thin. Sometimes, at the end of a session, he'll say, "Do you know what we have here?" I love this part. I wait for him to answer his own question. "We have happy teeth."

Of course I'm going to like this guy. And he likes me. Most people hate me. Not because of anything I do to them--I am always kind, and I am there for everyone, and I start nothing--but because of what I am. A problem here is that I take the train--the commuter rail, actually--to see my dentist. Who does that? What loyalty.

My dentist says to me, "I will close the office and drive you there!"

And that's what he did. More X-Rays are taken, and it's determined I must be in agony. I have a bad situation going on. Half hour after being deposited, I'm having a root canal. Then I'm back on the street, and you know what I did--I walked all the way back to the train station near my dentist's office, but not after first getting taking a wrong turn and, get this, ending up on the street where the Admiral and the Captain lived until last year.

Had an hour to kill, so I tried to fill the two prescriptions I'd been given--one for the pain, the other for the infection--but the pharmacy wouldn't take my insurance. Got an iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. Read. Train finally came, got the prescriptions filled at CVS. Taking the antibiotics, don't need the pain medicine. This is the first time I've had any kind of prescription drug since the pneumonia.

Still wrote more yesterday than just about any of these frauds and sycophants will write in a year. I did not like being prodded and worked on--it made me feel compromised. That's not the Zulu way, so I set about making sure I went decently hard today, but I will save that for another time.