Relief

My dentist’s office windows are slightly below street level and there’s a tallish brick wall between office and street. On a nice sunny day like today, all I can see of the people strolling down the sidewalk are their heads, rolling along the wall. Puts me in mind, in a nice way, of guillotines and overflowing baskets during the French revolution.

It’s a tad mesmerizing, a good thing, as I was there to have a painful back tooth extracted from the jaw that NEVER gets numb. Fortunately, I have a great dentist (with tiny fingers), who knows just how to jolly me along until the corner of my mouth droops and she can get to work.

So, tooth is gone, she showed it to me in all its cracked and gory glory, and assured me that removal was absolutely the correct decision. She’d given me a choice between spending $4,500 to visit a specialist and see if the tooth could be saved, or spending $220 to yank the sucker out. No brainer, that. Still, it’s nice to know that my frugal ways resulted in euthanasia, not murder.

I mentioned last night’s laugh fest and how the pain completely and mystifyingly disappeared when I laughed. She nodded. “Natural endorphins, best painkillers in the world. You can get them from laughing hard, or from sex. Personally, I recommend laughing. It lasts longer.”

Good to know.

 

Ouch again

Addendum to my post last night: Laughter is a great alleviator of pain…but it’s relatively short-lived.

I hope the dentist has enough chisels.

The power of laughter…and Ted Sawyer

I will never again sniff at all those perky little “power of laughter over pain” people. By golly (or in my case, by gum), it works.

Earlier tonight I was having trouble seeing over the knot of pain in my jaw caused by an infected tooth. I came yay-close to bagging the evening’s entertainment–Robyn had snagged tickets to a play in the Pearl–and thought of just going home to sob in my pillow.

In the end, I couldn’t figure out a way to decline without sounding whiny. We ate a fast dinner at Life of Riley, distinguished for slow service, salty so-so food and rather large checks, considering it was happy hour. Not really worth reviewing.

Then we scooted over to the Armory building, to the Portland Center Stage, and saw “Little Dog Laughed.” Fifteen minutes into the first act I was laughing so hard that it took another 15 minutes before I realized that I was pain-free for the first time in four days.

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