Thanks to lucky genetics, my life has been largely free of physical pain. Knees have been skinned and bones broken, but I’ve never had chronic ouches that don’t get better.
Some people live their entire lives in pain, which takes courage and perseverance I simply ain’t got. If I had even low-level pain, every day, with no hope of healing or ending it, I’d end Doug Holland instead.
The past week has been very painful, very. One of my rotten teeth has been hurting, so I’ve been swearing and moaning, taking toxic amounts of aspirin, and brushing my teeth ten times daily, with extra aggressive brushstrokes on the tooth at the center of the pain.
That’s been my strategy against every toothache in my adult life, and usually it works. The pain subsides. When it does, I go back to ignoring my dental health, same as I ignore my mental health, and my health health.
This latest toothache is a wowzer, though, and refuses to subside. It’s a punch in the jaw, then another punch in the jaw, then another. It throbs, and doesn’t let up. Pain radiates from a lower-level stand-alone bicuspid, its neighbors on both sides yanked decades ago. Shivers of astounding agony sometimes surge across all my lower teeth, and when that happens, my vision slips out of focus. Once or twice, I may have lost consciousness, though the pain leaves me so mentally adrift it’s hard to say.
Trying to write, I’ve repeatedly slipped into an almost-coma, typing nothing, doing nothing, thinking nothing, time whizzing past unnoticed. Yesterday I left my recliner to pee, came back, sat down, and the almost-coma held me in stasis until I needed to pee again — which means, for about 2½ hours I was only technically present.
♦ ♦ ♦
With past toothaches, ifI’ve been unable to swear and brush and aspirin the pain away, a dentist pulled the tooth. Nine teeth are gone, and it should’ve been more. My remaining chompers are all chipped, yellow, jagged, but so long as they can chew and don’t hurt, what’s for dinner?
Now, though, there’s pain. Chewing makes me cry, and what’s for dinner is soup. Soup is also breakfast and lunch.
I’m fat because I love to eat, but now eating makes me miserable, and after eating it’s even worse for a few hours. It hurts like, well, pulling teeth. Even at the pain’s lowest point, it’s hard to think of anything but the pain. Ohhhhhh.
Next to sex and food, writing is what I enjoy most in life, but now there’s no joy in it. It’s taken three days to squeeze this article out of me. If my mouth wasn’t being wrenched, if my whole head wasn’t Chernobyl, there’d be a joke or a colorful simile in here somewhere. Instead it’s all I can muster to run a spellcheck.
This is America, so I don’t have dental insurance. Can’t afford drilling and filling, but during moments of lucidity, I’ve clicked around and found that an extraction will cost $250 or so. That won’t break me, but I’m cheap, and don’t want to spend the money unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Maybe, maybe the pain will fade, with another week of swearing, taking aspirin, brushing the hell out of my teeth, and sitting in this chair, barely there.
7/8/2025
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