Pain

I have never appreciated modern medicine so much until today.

I have a bacterial infection in my lower jaw right now. It's a recurring infection that has happened to me twice in my life -- the first when I was 12, the second after my braces were removed. I was a teary mess last night, and I could not sleep without waking up every thirty minutes in throbbing pain. I saw a local dentist today who prescribed antibiotics and an even stronger pain-killer (I told him that Advil was having no effect anymore). So although the pain is not so severe as last night, my chin is now swollen like a baseball. I can barely even talk properly at this point.

If the antibiotics work as intended by Monday, the dentist says I may need to get two root canals.

As someone who has never broken a bone or been deathly ill, there is nothing I dread more than dental problems. All of my worst memories of physical pain have been dental-related. Sleepless nights, throbbing pain, Vicodin withdrawal, loss of appetite -- it's all there. I realized today though, that if it weren't for today's modern dentistry -- without the antibiotics and dental x-rays -- if I was living centuries earlier with this same bacterial infection, I could very well go insane from the pain -- and perhaps lose those teeth or even die from the infection.

In fact, the pain I was going through this morning would have been enough to make me consider taking self-destructive action, if I hadn't had the consolation that I would be seeing a dentist in a few hours.