Oh, the throbbing!

Sorry, just my small attempt at getting some of the google hits that Dan's managing over at All That Comes With It by repeating the names of some birds in a recent post.

I know I've been writing a lot lately about being sick, but this afternoon was kind of memorable. I had to drive to one of our other plants for something and I was only there for a few minutes before I turned around and started back. It was a pretty nice day for a drive--sunny, the roads have pretty much cleared up from the 5 inches of snow we've gotten over the last three days, and Wisconsin Public Radio was discussing something somewhat interesting.

I am going to have to have a root canal, and I'm on the waiting list for the endodontist. They're going to call when they have an opening and I'll have 2 hours to drop everything and get up there, to be relieved of the pain that's had me popping Tylenol at an alarming rate.

As I left town, I noticed that my already-you-know-that-you-can-usually-expect-it late afternoon throb was starting in my jaw, but it wasn't too bad, so I started out. It's a 45-minute trip and within 15 minutes, my jaw really started to hurt. By 30 minutes, I was calculating how many more miles I had to go. There isn't really anywhere to stop on this trip to buy Tylenol and I stupidly didn't have any with me.

I pulled up at the plant I worked at and went straight to the vending machine that dispenses commonly used medications. I popped in my quarter and trudged up the stairs to the bubbler to swallow my relief. You would not have wanted to get in my way as I headed towards those pills. I told Greg when I got home that if he had held those pills from me and required me to murder someone to get them, I'd have asked him who he wanted killed.

My whole face and head felt throbbing and tight and tense and sensitive and hot and hurt. By the time I swallowed those pills, the pain had moved up as far as my eye socket and even that hurt. Bizarre.

20 minutes later, I felt perfectly normal. Let us now all bow down and give thanks for modern pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical companies may perpetrate the biggest ripoffs of consumers in modern and ancient history, but god knows, they do give people what they need.