Ow

On October 23, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

In retrospect, I should have kept the tooth, or at least gotten a picture of it. I did ask to see it, and I was surprised at how small it was for some reason. One would think I would know how big my own teeth are! I do not.

That said, despite finding out that I was also scheduled for a filling on a tooth that I had thought the doc said we were just going to keep an eye on, the procedure was quick and more or less completely painless. I want to say something like “the shots were the worst part,” but the shots weren’t even enough to qualify as bad, since they start with numbing gel anyway, so I barely felt them. The drilling for the filling (heh) seemed like it took less than a minute. There’s been no pain post-removal, at least not yet. I’m supposed to be super religious about soft foods for at least another couple of days, so hopefully nothing dumb is going to happen between now and then.

One weird thing: we very nearly had to cancel the extraction because of my blood pressure. I also had a doctor’s appointment this morning, and my blood pressure was a reasonable 120/83. The first two readings in the dentist’s chair, despite me not feeling either especially nervous or, really, any emotional or physical symptoms at all, were an absolutely insane 173/120 and 171/123, both of which are alarmingly close to get to the hospital right now levels of hypertension. They did the filling and tested me again and it was down to 136/87, still high, but not what the fuck high. It’s crazy to me that my blood pressure can get that high without me feeling any particular sort of way while it’s going on, but had it hit that a third time they’d have had to reschedule me with an oral surgeon who could put me completely under instead of doing the extraction in-office.

Weird.

I’ve spent the majority of the day since getting home blasting through Dungeon Crawler Carl VI: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride on my Kindle; I’ve probably read over half of it today and I’m getting progressively more and more angry about how fucking good this series is. It’s absolutely unfair that something this ridiculous has this much emotional heft to it. Somebody should be in jail. It doesn’t have to be anyone affiliated with the book, as I doubt Matt Dinniman could finish the series from behind bars, so we may have to pick someone else. The President, maybe.

An update to the impossible

On March 19, 2018March 19, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

You may recall this recent post, where I revealed the existence of my new electrical powers. I am … well, not proud, really, more confused— to announce that not only have I continued to shock myself on that goddamn piece of furniture (and nothing else in the store) but that I managed to deliver an electrical shock to a customer today by handing him an invoice. The shock traveled over the piece of paper; our hands did not touch.

I am terrified to touch one of our power sofas, which actually do run on electricity. I’m starting to think I might die if I do.

Five days since the tooth removal, and I’ve still had barely a second of pain at any point, which blows my mind. I just said this in a comment a month ago, but if dental surgery had always been this easy, no one would be afraid of going to the dentist. I’m blown away at how lucky I got.

Well, that was easy

On March 15, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

090819164319_1_540x360 — Pictured: not my tooth

The tooth extraction has basically turned out to be nothing worth talking about, honestly, which isn’t going to stop me from devoting an entire blog post to it. The most complicated part was convincing the … nurse? not-the-dentist-but-not-clearly-a-hygienist? Dental assistant? I dunno, the lady who wasn’t the dentist– that while I appreciated the offer of sunglasses and would happily wear them during the procedure, the idea that the television in the room should be tuned to my needs (“Christ, no, not the news, anything but that”) or that the in-room bluetooth should be playing my own personal pullin’-teeth playlist was utterly unnecessary. The TV doesn’t even have to be on, and if it’s going to be on my only condition is that it be either not turned to a channel that’s going to provoke rage or muted. I really don’t need music.

She really had trouble with this idea. Apparently it’s rare that patients for extractions don’t have media demands while going through the procedure. Personally, I don’t get it.

Anyway, the nurse smeared my tongue and the area of the tooth with some sort of numbing gel and left me alone for a few minutes and then the dentist came in. We talked about Hamilton for a few minutes and then he did … something inside my mouth for maybe a minute and said “Okay, all done!” and left.

I was surprised to learn that a tooth extraction takes less than a minute; I hadn’t felt a damned thing. I expressed my surprise (“Holy shit, that’s it?”) and then discovered that, no, he hadn’t even touched the tooth, I’d just received three numbing shots to complement the numbing gel; the various non-dentists in the room were vastly entertained by my theory that the dentist declaring “all done” meant that “all” was “done” and that I could go home.

It was not, and I could not.

That said, the actual extraction took maybe five minutes. He warned me beforehand that he suspected he might have to break the tooth to get it all out; as it was maybe 97% of it came right out and then he had to do a touch more fiddling around to get a tiny piece of root that stayed behind. There was no pain whatsoever. There wasn’t even any real sense of pressure or discomfort or even tugging. If he hadn’t shown me the tooth I don’t know that I’d have believed he removed it, since I couldn’t feel anything inside my mouth– it was hours before I could actually feel the hole the tooth left behind with my tongue. My appointment was at 10:00 and I was texting my wife that I was finished at 10:30.

Several hours of lazing about the house and occasionally switching out my gauze ensued; as of this moment the extraction was ten and a half hours ago and while it’s been a bit obnoxious I still can’t say that I’ve felt any actual pain at any point. I ate ice cream and applesauce and had macaroni and cheese for dinner. I’m going to take some painkillers before bed strictly as prophylaxis but I’m not sure I really need them.

So, yeah. Kinda feel like an idiot that that had me more nervous than my gallbladder surgery did ten years ago. I mean, shit still has time to go south if I lose the blood clot or something, but so far this has been cake.

In which I annoy a medical professional

On March 1, 2018March 1, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy10 Comments

Carie_0fada0_3648754 So. Uh. Oops?

You may recall my misadventures in corn chippery over the weekend. The doctor at the ER who checked me out said she thought my tooth might be cracked, so I made an appointment with an actual dentist like a big boy to have it looked at. Now, this person is “my dentist” in the sense that ten years ago when the exact same thing happened to me (possibly not involving corn chips) his office was the one I went to. I’m not afraid of the dentist, I swear, I just … don’t prioritize it? So the last time I was in there was the last time I was in there.

Anyway, what I figured would happen was that they’d look at the tooth, do some X-rays, maybe a cleaning, and then make a recommendation for what to do about the tooth in the longer term. And if they tell me that the tooth needs to come out, so be it. I’m grown, I can handle a little tooth pull. It’ll be fine.

So. Dental assistant gently chided me for the length of time in between visits (fair) inspected my teeth (expected) took some X-rays (still following the script) and then called the dentist in, and then the whole damn thing went sideways.

“So, we’re gonna take that out today,” is how he started the conversation.

“Uh,” I said. “Today?”

“Right now,” he said, gesturing at a pile of tools behind him.

“About that,” I say, realizing that in a very real way my entire life has been leading up to the next three sentences that are about to come out of my mouth, “It’s my 10th anniversary? And I have reservations at an expensive steakhouse and tickets to Hamilton tonight? I am not throwing away my shot.”

And of course neither of them get it.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“We are not going to be pulling any of my teeth today. I intend to be eating a large steak in about eight hours. I’ll make an appointment for next week.”

… it didn’t go over well.

So, serious question: I had not for a single second anticipated the possibility that absent an imminent dental emergency they were going to just go and yank a tooth out of my mouth on no notice. All of my training with medical procedures for my entire life has led me to believe that this is the decision flowchart:

Make medical appointment to discuss/diagnose problem.
Are you dying or in danger of imminent death? If yes, go to 4. If not, go to 3.
Make second appointment sometime in the future to remedy problem.
Do surgery, or radiation, or whatever.

So apparently I need to add a 2a, which reads are we gonna pull a tooth? and if the answer is yes you also go to 4.

Anyway, I stuck to my guns– turns out it’s awfully hard to convince me to let you yank a tooth out of my mouth if I didn’t wake up today prepared for tooth extraction and have very expensive uncancellable plans that will be totally screwed up if you try to pull my teeth– and now I have an appointment next Thursday for a tooth extraction.

Which I’m sure will be all sorts of fun and generate at least one more blog post.

(Please, somebody, speak up in comments and tell me if I should have been expecting this– because I literally hadn’t even considered the idea that they’d go straight to an extraction without specifically scheduling it. Am I nuts?)