after my oral surgeon described my pain response as “atypical” i was curious to see if i’d feel any pain after the tooth extraction. the oral surgeon gave me some high strength ibuprofen and hydrocodone and though it was very likely i would not be going to work the next day as the tooth didn’t come out easily. “you might be able to go to work for part of the day,” the oral surgeon said, “but have the pain medicine with you and i hope you don’t have to talk too much.”
i decided that rather than proactively taking the meds to prevent the pain that i thought would come, that i’d wait and see. would the pain arrive?
no, it did not. i went to work with a visibly swollen cheek bone from the extraction, one less tooth and no pain. and i did a good amount of talking. not only did i not feel any pain, but i think i feel in some sense better than before the extraction but it’s hard to describe “how” the better feels.
which explains why i’m just staring at the pain meds i’m not taking thinking about the qualia of pain.
what’s more fun than a a root canal? going through a root canal and then learning it didn’t work so you have to have the tooth extracted and a cadaver bone graft put in place to help build the “significant” ( word choice of the oral surgeon ) amount of bone loss you’ve suffered from the infection that’s been raging in your mandible ( as if the prospect of getting my skeleton worked on isn’t weird enough, i will now have the first what might be several bone grafts from a cadaver in my jaw ).
like everyone else, the oral surgeon was surprised i have not felt any pain which is the normal early indicator of an infection in your tooth and helps signal something is wrong before it spreads to your jaw and beyond. “yeah, you’re atypical”
i’ll try not to ruminate too much on why i’m not feeling any pain. or what other types of pain i might not be feeling ( after marathons, i feel tired for sure, but not painful per se ). what is pain? do i process some sorts of pain differently than others? or maybe i do feel pain but i’ve gotten really good at ignoring it?
{ intertwingled since 2000 }