Have you ever had a feeling that life was going to suck soon?
When last I went in for dental work I'd done some planning ahead and made an appointment to get one last problem taken care of, namely, the oldest and first filling in the clinical disaster area known as my mouth that had started leaking a few years ago. So, I went in to see my dentist this morning... after the usual round of novocaine injections and pleasantries Dr. Huang started to drill away the old filling and clean the decay and accumulated cellular garbage out. About halfway through the procedure I started feeling everything. Not because the local gave out, mind you, but because the nerves were involved (probably in the early stages of infection, judging by how lousy I'd been feeling this week) and just weren't going offline. Another x-ray showed a bit of inflammation of the roots, which meant that I was in the HOV lane headed to root canal city with a plastic temporary filling riding shotgun and one hell of a case of nerves.
By a case of nerves, I mean a full blown panic attack, complete with dizziness and shaking hands. I've been feeling off for a couple of days but between a bad tooth, my usual French press of coffee this morning, and three jabs of novocaine mixed with epinephrine, I kind of lost my shit somewhere between the dentist's office and home. I was able to make it home for a few minutes during which time I was able to dump my baggage (so to speak) and pull myself together. That got me as far as Dr. Suh's office, where it required another four syringes of whatever high-test stuff he uses to be able to go in there and clean the works out. Even when he broke out my old friends I could still kind of feel it down in one of the roots. I finally headed for home around 1400 EST5EDT today, called off of work, and tried to get some sleep. My facial nerves had taken so much abuse that even my left eye was having difficulty tracking with its twin (which made driving entertaining, let me tell you) and I'd managed to use up all my blood sugar reserves (which rarely helps anything).
To give you an idea of how fried I am, it's taken me about three hours to write this entry.
Note to self: Avoid coffee when expecting stimulants later in the morning. The central nervous system saved will be probably my own.
Additional note to self: Add all dentists to my Yule card list.