Day 89 -- Dental Drama

I've been playing phone tag for the last two days w/ my older daughter's Mayo gastroenterologist who has ordered a colonoscopy and endoscopy for next week.  She's in the midst of a terrible flare-up of her Crohn's Disease brought on largely by antibiotics for sinus infections and stress from final exams.  One of the tests he wants to run before next week's procedures is a stool sample to check for bacterial infection.  She's done this test well over a half dozen times in the last seven-and-a-half years, and each time the tests come back negative.  When the nurse told me about this test this afternoon, I knew my daughter was not going to be happy.  And I knew I wasn't going to have time to stop by the hospital to pick up the lab kit b/c I had a dental appointment.  While waiting in the dentist chair for the left side of my mouth to go numb, I text my daughter to tell her to pick up the kit.  Understand, she's completely unaware at this point about having to take this test.  When she calls, not texts, I know she's not going to like what I have to say. 

Here's the scene, I'm lying in a dental chair, the dental assistant is on my left wielding an air compressor-like device to blow away the bits of old filling that come flying out of my mouth.  The dentist is on my right producing an unending array of drills that shriek in a variety of frequencies that fortunately are masked by the air compressor.  No frequency, however, is high or loud enough to cover the sound of my cell phone ringing.  It's my daughter.  I reject the call.  She calls again.  I quickly tell the dentist what I have to reveal to my daughter.  He encourages me to answer.  As predicted, she is extremely agitated.  I relay the message that she must pick up the stool kit and tell her that I'm in the midst of getting a filling.  The line goes dead.  The drilling continues.  A tear trickles down the side of my face as the dentist apologizes for all the suffering my family and I have had to endure.  They couldn't write a scene like this in Hollywood.

On the upside....when the dentist was numbing my lower left jaw, I felt twinges of pain in my left ear.  When I told him this, he said some nerves are connected.  Maybe it's not an ear infection or the lymphoma that has been causing the achiness on the left side of my neck.  Maybe it was the cavity and broken tooth.  Supposedly our teeth can be the root (yes, the pun was intended) of aches and pains.  While everything was numb, I had no pain in my left ear or neck.  Now that the Novocaine has worn off, the ache is back.  As always, I'll see what tomorrow brings.