Dentist

The night before yesterday I woke up at 4 am with a really bad toothache.

The pain had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. I tried to go back to sleep, but after an hour or so of writhing around, I decided to get up and take a painkiller. That seemed to help, and I eventually fell asleep again.

Yesterday, Thorsten and I woke up late for once (we usually get up around 8 or 9 -- impressive considering we usually don't have any commitments), and my tooth was a lot better. Soon after breakfast, however, it started hurting badly again. Again I tried with an Ibuprohen, and again it seemed to do the trick.

We decided to go for a walk in the park. It was Martin Luther King Day, so many families, couples, joggers and solitary strollers had found their way to the snowy park, which was bustling with life.

By the time we came home and started preparing dinner, the pain had started again -- and this time it was even more ferocious. I could barely stand it and found myself pacing the apartment agitatedly every time a new wave of pain hit me (luckily, it would stop now and then). I realized that the problem wasn't going to go away on its own, and we started googling around to see where we'd find a dentist. The painkillers -- Ibuprophen and Aspirin -- had stopped having an effect.

Evening came, we finally went to bed. What felt like knives jabbing at my jaw kept me awake until 4 am. Lacking any other options, I tried some more painkillers. Again, they didn't seem to have an effect.

So when we got up this morning and the pain wasn't any better, we knew what had to be done. After a shower and a small breakfast, we headed for the closest dentist. Thanks to the "crazy weather" (5 cm of feeble, melting snow), a lot of people had cancelled their appointments at the clinic, and I could get in immediately. We were told a check-up would cost around $130, and didn't have a problem with that. To my great relief, I was given a shot of anaesthetics almost immediately after being x-rayed.

Turns out that I had a cracked, dead tooth with a festering, inflamed nerve that was causing a lot of pressure -- and hence, pain.

Long story short -- I spent my afternoon at that clinic. I had an (amazingly pain-free) root canal done by two extremely friendly young women, and we left a flabbergasting $2.500 poorer. All in all, an authentically American experience.