duck-shaped pain

21 February 2003
My fingers will be the death of me.

My week:

a. Should have gone well because I got two days off of school this week, presumably for President's Day, but it was officially called something like "winter break." It was welcome, but spring break is less than a month away and is not even in spring this year, so the timing is sort of puzzling. I spent one day of my break refusing to leave the house, for several reasons. One was the painkillers I was prescribed for my tooth -- it started hurting again, so I took some, and while they didn't kill pain, they stomped any motivation I had to bits, so it was best not to move off the couch. Another reason I failed to leave the house was Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky, which was a late birthday present that I just now started reading. The author is the same guy who wrote that book explaining how COD, of all things, changed the world, and he attempts to do the same with salt, which seems more plausible, although he stretches things a bit to make his point. The cod book had recipes, though, and there are none for salt, presumably because everyone knows a recipe that contains or is enhanced by salt. The other day of break, I worked, which sucked, since it was the next-to-last day before my coworker C. quit, which is a bad thing. Making the situation more dire was the fact that a replacement has yet to be hired, which means The Employer will probably expect me to take over her duties for a while (okay) or (much worse) train her replacement. I assure all of you that if you had the choice, you would not want me to train you to do anything.

b. But it got much worse on Wednesday, because I had my first of what will turn out to be many, many trips to a special, expensive dentist. This trip was to the cosmetic dentist, and cosmetic dentistry has to be a complete cash cow, since this was the fanciest dentist's office I've ever been in. The waiting room was decorated oddly. The effect, I believe was to have it look like a Roman palazzo crossed with a tacky 1980s Wall-Street-trader bachelor's loft. Lots of statues and columns and neon (!) and overstuffed chairs upholstered in clashing, aggressive stripes. There were also badly painted pictures of the sea covering all of the walls, something which always feels appropriate here in the desert, far, far away from any water. To top it all off, there was a scary bronze statue by the receptionist's desk, of a disembodied grinning mouth being painted, as if it were a canvas, by a floating arm wielding a paintbrush. Still, the dentist was very good, even if I spent 90 minutes and $130 to hear that a) I have bad teeth (which I already knew) and b) she can't help me now, since my main problems are in the gums and under the visible surface of my teeth. The x-rays she took showed that I have an abscess under my fake tooth and that the root canal performed on that tooth oh so long ago has failed and that to fix this, I will have to have, possibly, another root canal at the least. Then, after that, she can possibly put in another fake tooth or something else to make me look less like a hockey player. She referred me to an endodontist, and word from that office is that the word I'll need to get done there will run $900 or so.

c. The cosmetic dentist told me chewing your nails is very bad on your teeth, and I have, over 20+ years of doing so, worn off a lot of enamel on my real teeth. So the news here is that I need to stop chewing my nails, which I assure you will be very, very difficult for me to do. I have had other nervous, orally fixated habits that I have eventually overcome, such as smoking. But while cigarettes are expensive, smelly and something I have to leave the house to buy, my fingernails are always there, ten brittle, white friends, ready to take whatever stress-related abuse I unload on them. So if anyone has any suggestions on how, exactly, to stop chewing my fingernails, it would be appreciated. Compared to this, ceasing to smoke was easy.

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