If you’re paying close attention or keeping score at home, you might remember that Doug has a toothache. For nearly a month now, pain levels have gone up and down like a rollercoaster, and a few times the down-levels have been so slight and long-lasting that I thought I’d won, but then the up-levels scold me for such foolish thinking.
Lately the pain has extended far beyond the original tooth, leaving my entire lower jaw numb and painful (conundrum alert!). The jaw is swollen, leaving all my bottom teeth very tightly jammed against each other, and it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them cracked under the pressure.
Searching for cheap dentists has scored me two appointments for Tuesday, August 12, though it’s hard to imagine I’d survive until then.
Searching for emergency dentists got me a stand-by appointment on Wednesday, August 6, but ‘standby’ means I go in and wait in their office and hope someone cancels a real appointment, in which case I get dental care.
Searching for DENTIST NOW led me toward a more expensive hammer-and-chisel guy, who’ll see me tomorrow if I bring cash in unmarked bills. If we make the deal and he yanks the tooth, I’ll cancel the other appointments.
The place seems sorta shady, so I’m hoping they’ll skip the big sales pitch dentists always give. Always, despite me pointing at the problem tooth, every dentist wants to cure my entire mouth, which is of course a pit of rot & decay. The big pitch is always, “We can give you a Tom Cruise smile, for only $110,000 (or some such outlandish number) and 28 bi-weekly visits over the next year.”
Of course, I don’t have $110,000, and if I did I’d spend it on pizza deliveries and making a porn-movie masterpiece. Got zero interest in being a fat Tom Cruise. All I want is the ability to think about something, anything, without also thinking about the pain.
8/1/2025
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