The Week That Will Live in Infamy

Oftentimes, I feel like I don't have much of note to post here. Enter, this week. I won't waste any more time on deliberation. Here goes...

Monday, one of my upper back molars started hurting like the dickens. This tooth has given me problems a few times before. I actually had a root canal done on it and a crown. When I woke up on Tuesday, the pain was excruciating. I immediately sent out an email to Wheaton friends (seeing as I... uh... haven't been to the dentist in a while), asking for dentist recs. I got Dr. Beck's name twice, so I quickly made the call. I immediately fell in love with his office. The secretary was amazing sweet, and, considering my pain, she booked me an appointment for 3, that day. Later that day, she called back to make sure I could still tolerate the pain because they would do everything they could to fit me in earlier, if possible.

I toughed it out, though, and a little before 3:00, I walked in and met with Dr. Beck. They took x-rays, which nearly made me jump out of my skin. The long and the short of it-- he saw what looked to be an abscess, so he called an endodontist, Dr. Brandys, who could fit me in right away.

I left the office, the pain from my tooth now shooting up through my whole face, got in my car and turned the key. The engine revved but wouldn't turn over. I tried it a few more times. Nothing. I called Mike, asked if there were any quick fixes I could try. No. I trudged back into the dentist's.

The secretary, again, super-nice, asked if I had cables to jump it. I went out to check, and then Dr. Beck himself came out. He told me his son was driving around, but since they expected me at the endodontist now, he thought that maybe Mark could just drive me there, and we could deal with my car later. Really, talk about full-service dentistry: a check-up and chauffeur service!

So, Mark and I had a nice drive to Glen Ellyn, where he dropped me off, gave me his number-- just in case my life continued to fall apart in a uniform way and I became stranded again-- and I went to the endodontist.

I'll skip the non-exciting details, but Dr. Brandys said that I'd have to have a root canal... or, I guess, a re-root canal? He'd have to undo the old one and replace it. Now, it was 4-something, I was in Glen Ellyn, and I had no ride. Naturally, pretty much all my Wheaton friends were either sick or working, but I called THE MOST WONDERFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD, Connie Tameling, who came to my rescue.

She drove me home, and the girls and I waited for Mike to come home.

This would be a fairly good end to the story, I think. But wait... there's more!!

We had to go check on my car, still parked at Dr. Beck's office. The battery was fine, the car couldn't be jumped, so Mike dropped all the Green girls back off at the house and went to wait for the tow truck.

Wednesday went fine. I didn't have a car, but it was gorgeous out, and I had Tylenol with codeine. I love Tylenol with codeine. :)

Thursday was my root canal day. The car still wasn't ready, so Mike worked from Wheaton and stayed with the girls after dropping me off at the doc at noon.

Root canals aren't necessarily a good time, but really, it's not all that awful either. I was numbed, and the doc put a little prop in the other side of my mouth, so I didn't have to just hold it open the whole time. Dr. B did his thing, sat my chair up and said, "Well, we have a problem." Now I don't want to sound like a defeatist or a complainer here, but my only thought was, Of course we do. He then went on to tell me that the previous guy had used three posts instead of one, which he'd seen before. What he hadn't seen before was the type of cement used. He tried every trick in his book, and he couldn't break through it. So I get to brag about being a first IN HIS CAREER! Root canal fail.

This left us with one real option: surgery in which he slices my gum, lifts up the flap, removes the infected tissue, puts a filling-type-thing on the root, closes it all up and stitched my gum back down. That's happening next Tuesday. Awesome.

I left the office, and remember, I'm car-less, so I called Mike to see if the girls were awake. Nope. Fortunately, there was a Starbucks about a block away, so I went and hung out there for about an hour. Figures that this is the day both girls set records with their napping times. At a little over an hour, I realized, Why am I just sitting here? I'll just start walking home. I called Mike, told him the plan. We were both certain the girls would be up soon, and he could intercept me.

4.2 miles later, I was finished with my post-root canal stroll down lovely Roosevelt, the girls were still sleeping, and my face was still numb.

Oh, and that night, we decided to go to the grand opening of Chik-Fil-A for dinner (because gosh darn it, we deserved it!), where Noelle puked up her entire stomach contents all over me.

The End.

Update: Our toilet broke last night, right before we had company over.