Last Tuesday I had my wisdom teeth out. It totally kicked my butt. I wanted to talk about artificial intelligence in medicine and robotic dentists, but I’m in scramble mode so I’m just whining instead.
I knew having them pulled wasn’t going to be a vacation, but I thought I was lucky and smart. There were only 3 teeth to pull, and they were fully in, nothing impacted. The dentist didn’t even recommend anesthesia, just novocaine was fine. The plan was to go in at 8:00 in the morning, have them yanked, spend the rest of the day recovering and then an easy next day.
My luck started slipping before 6:00 am. There was a cold rain falling and the streets were covered in black ice. School had a delayed start. Instead of the kids being out of the house at 6:45, the bus wasn’t coming until 8:45. I asked to push the extraction back until 11:00. This left me much less kid free recovery time than I as planning on.
Apparently I have strong bones. The dentist said this was good in case I slipped on the ice, less chance of breaking a bone. Not good for getting wisdom teeth out. She was awesome, as gentle as possible and doing her best to not make it drag on longer than necessary. But I swear at one point she had a foot on the arm rest to get more leverage.
Also, two of them were on the bottom. There was a significant amount of torque on my lower jaw as she battled to free the teeth from their bony grip.
In all the process took less than forty five minutes. On the way home I stopped at CVS to get prescription pain killers and I was back in the house before 12:30. I rested and watched a movie that wrapped up just before the first kid got home at 2:35. My mouth was still numb and there was drool running down my chin but I was up to greet him.
While the teeth holes were uncomfortable it was all of the side effects that I hadn’t anticipated that caused me so much distress. Mostly the jaw pain, and not being able to sleep. I’m a stomach sleeper and usually lay my head on the part where the wisdom teeth used to live. Trying to sleep on my back had me waking up every forty five minutes.
After two nights of poor sleep I was just exhausted and even though I was getting better I was feeling worse. On top of all that my diet was naturally messed up from not being able to eat my normal foods. The weight loss was great, but the headache that clouded my brain made it near impossible to think for more than a few minutes. Virtually impossible to come up with thousands of words of fiction.
Anyway, long story long, I was not productive last week. Based on all the things around the house that fell through the cracks I doubt my writing work will be productive this week either. But I am going to try.
For those following along for the numbers update on the Off Earth Series progress –
Book 1 – They Awake
Target release date – 4/13/2018 Behind schedule
Last weeks word count/target – 6,440/22,000
This weeks word count target – 22,000 words
Total words/projected – 66,148/95,000
