Alvin the Chipmunk Meets the Tooth Fairy

Something has been creeping up on me, slowly but whammo! For the first six nights after we returned from our trip to East Africa, I had chills at night. Well, the temps were below freezing, so that is no biggie, but then strangely between 3am and 6am, I had the night sweats. How do I narrow it down to those hours? I have a habit of looking at the clock when I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night to see if it is worth returning to bed or if I should get something on my TO DO list checked off.

At 3am, everything is cozy when I crawl back into bed, but by my 6am walkabout, the sheets had been soaked. There is nothing more uncomfortable than getting into a cold, wet bed.

The day before yesterday, the sweats stopped, but the toothache started. With the exception of smoking for the past 43 years, I was the model dental patient. I brushed twice daily minimum, flossed after every meal, snack, or munchie, and had my teeth cleaned every three months. Did it help? Hell no! I have a raging infection in one of the eye teeth on the bottom. My cheek started swelling yesterday. I took aspirin for the pain, but switched to Motrin since aspirin causes stomach bleeding. The Motrin did absolutely nothing, so it was back to a potential stomach bleed, which was better than the pain. What really helped was rinsing with medicated mouthwash, but swishing around a good whiskey did not hurt at all either.

This morning, I woke up looking like Alvin the chipmunk. If I could sing in a high pitched voice, I could have cut a record. The right side of my face was so swollen, I had to turn sideways to get through doors. I called Randy Simor at Medi-Tours Hungary to get me fixed up with a dentist. We have had a long time dentist we refer to as Robert Redford, because he is young and good looking, but he is a real pain to reach in emergencies. Randy made an appointment for 3pm today.

Of course, I don't like the news. The tooth has to go. It has not played well with others and is causing problems so that the other teeth may learn the bad habits and join in the nasty games. The problem is, I have a four hour professional seminar I am giving tomorrow. I refused to go to a professional seminar to present missing a tooth in the front. No matter how hard I tried, the lower lip does need to lower for some sounds and vavoom, the lower teeth are exposed. I put it off until Tuesday, though the dentist was not happy. He did give me antibiotics for over the weekend.

There is something devastatingly depressing about losing your teeth as an adult. When you are a child, you hope the Tooth Fairy comes to see you. As an adult, it is an automatic statement about your self care, regardless of giving it all you had. It is also a sign of things to come, the debilitating ailments that may or may not follow. With any luck the Tooth Fairy will come with a great replacement tooth. Then I will not be so sad.

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