Yesterday, I went in for some dental surgery. It was my first experience with dental surgery, and therefore I celebrated the day before by painting the back deck. I don’t know if you have ever painted a deck before, but if you haven’t, let me tell you this: deck paint is not like regular paint. It’s thicker, a lot thicker, about the consistency of tooth paste. Except it doesn’t come in a little tube, it comes in a five-gallon bucket, so there is no squeezing involved.
When I scheduled my dental surgery, my surgical dentist, not my regular dentist, explained that there were five levels of pain management available to me, some came at an extra cost. “Level 5,” he said, “involves being cryogenically frozen until such time in the future that these procedures are accomplished without any pain whatsoever. In fact, there would be no need for these procedures at all.”
I was so freaked out by his explanation of Level 5 that I completely missed what he said about Level 4.
Level 3, he said, “Involves two pills. Take the first one the night before the procedure, and you will sleep better than you have ever slept. Take the second one an hour before the procedure, and you won’t care what I do to your mouth.”
Level 2 is “Novocaine.”
Level 1 is “Best described as ‘Suck it up, buttercup’.”
I thought for a moment and asked, “Does Level 3 cost extra?l” (Since I retired, my dental insurance sucks, but that’s another post.”)
So, on Monday when I finished my celebratory painting of the deck, I was putting away all the Colgate paint and the tools and so on, and as I was making my last trip to the shed, I opened the door and felt something tumble down my forehead and in between my glasses and my left and then sting me about half an inch below my eyelid. Within an hour, my left eye was all swollen, and I could hardly see out of it for two days. I had to squint to write this, and I’m still squinting a little bit almost two days later. But I took that pill he gave me and damned if I didn’t sleep like a baby.
The next morning, I got up, took my second pill a hour before the procedure, and Vanessa drove me to the dentists office, where apparently stuff happened that I only have a vague memory about. This morning, the day after the surgery, I’m feeling fine, though I am not going to operate any chain saws or other complicated machinery for a while.
