Thtop It

Late last week I was having a nosh on some yummy crackers and extra sharp cheddar when I noticed that a couple of my bottom back teeth felt funny. My bite felt wrong. Thinking that I must have gotten some cracker bits all jammed up in there I went to bathroom, grabbed some floss and began to go to town. It only took a second to loosen whatever was stuck but when I popped out the floss something flew out of my mouth and landed with a tiny hard marble-ly sound into the sink.

Normally the crap stuck between my teeth doesn't do that.

Flossing is typically a pretty quiet activity for me.

My first thought was wow that was some tough cracker bit, then soon realized, as I'm sure you have gathered by now because you are probably way smarter than me and have noticed the graphic that the top of my post, that it was a big giant chunk of my tooth. Great. My tooth broke.

I finally was able to get it fixed today. Meanwhile it was no big deal. If anything it was a bit annoying because I was constantly poking and digging at the broken spot with my tongue which made for some pretty attractive facial expressions I'm sure, but that's just proof of my lack of self control. I wasn't in any pain.

Anyhoo... interesting thing I found out about myself today - my dentist has my chart marked that I'm a squirming cryface. It's true, I am. They even numb me when I get my teeth cleaned because I'm such a baby girl, but today because the work was a little more extensive than a cleaning, he had to replace a filling and build up the tooth and then file everything back down again, he numbed me way more than normal. Way more. Like my appointment was at 8am this morning, it's now almost 2:30pm and I am still numb.

Like unable to eat without fear of unknowingly biting my own lips off numb. So numb that I called the dentists office a couple of hours ago to make sure this was normal numb. The receptionist looked at my chart and was like Oh yeah, you might be numb for awhile still, like dinner time. Then she told me that I already had my chart marked to get extra numb and for this procedure he gave me a couple of extra squirts.

It's pretty irritating at this point and I've limited myself to very small bites of soft, soft food until I can be reassured that the food I'm swallowing doesn't include any parts of my own face. Fortunately for me the only truly soft, soft food we had in the house (ignoring oatmeal, of course, bleh) was a little tray of Tiramisu.

Oh yeth - I nearly forgot. A fun thide effect of the extreme numbneth and having no control of my own tongue ith that I'm currently unable to thay my Th'th, which I dithcovered during a brief phone converthation with my friend Thephanie thith morning. Here ith a picture:

Amy's Hernia

My best friend Amy is a delicate flower.

She was that girl in middle school, you know the one that was always fainting and had to breathe into paper bags, sit with her head between her knees and be excused from dissecting things in biology and watching films in health class. Amy gets light headed when exposed to all things involving blood, guts, pus, vomit and spiders.

Poop for some reason doesn't bother her, but all the rest, forget about it.

She can't take extreme changes in temperature either and gets heat stroke when it's hot and chilblains when it's cold. She's kind of like a Chihuahua. Being extremely fair skinned (her nickname in middle school was Maalox - because she was chalky - get it?) and weighing no more than a buck and half haven't done much to toughen her up.

I was never like that. I was of a heartier stock or have a stockier heart or whatever, and tended to be the robust, husky girl who escorted the fainting, pukey girl to the nurses office. Probably because I was the only one big enough to pick her up and carry her if she collapsed on the way (perhaps my nickname in middle school should have been Butch).

Amy and I didn't meet until we were in our early 20's, so we didn't know each other in middle school, but if we had, you get the picture.

Over the years I have carried her to the proverbial nurses office many times and killed a spider or two for her along the way. I've seen her through sinus scraping, placenta-previa, childbirth, numerous root canals and various other assorted revolting dental surgeries.

Mostly I'm just there for moral support, to keep her calm and try to fatten her up with Big Macs and Nerds. Of course girls that are delicate flowers seldom have much of an appetite during times of physical crises and the snacks were really for me.

Anyhoo... now we live really far away from each other and last week she had surgery and I'm not there when the girl is down for the count. She's got Ted now and he does a good job I suppose, but it's difficult knowing that I can't just pop over with McDonald's and sour candy and make it all better.

((WARNING - If you are a delicate flower, have a heart condition, any characteristics resembling a Chihuahua and are under the age of 18, DO NOT CLICK on the link in the paragraph below.))

I mentioned in an earlier post that Amy had a femoral hernia. She walked around like this for weeks, frightened out of her mind that she was growing a wiener, before finally going to the doctor.

She had a lot of other things going on at the time, namely that her ex-husband Assface's unemployment ran out and he took her to court for child support and now she has to pay him. Turns out that with shared custody the parent who makes the most money pays. His unemployment check was more than her salary as a teacher, by the way.

By the time she made it in to see the doctor she was feeling very world weary and downtrodden. When the doctor asked her what was going on she described her ailment, namely the large bulge that seemed to be sprouting from her groin-al area and proudly announced, "I think I'm finally growin' a pair."