Toothless Wonder

This morning found me waking early to pay a visit to my friendly neighborhood Oral Surgeon who proceeded to yank six teeth out of my mouth.
In so doing he completed the final phase in my secret origin as a super hero: The Toothless Wonder!
Yes, it’s the Toothless Wonder, strange visitor from a town without a central fluoridated water supply, who, in his identity as Jon Maki, lazy kid with parents who didn’t have dental insurance, never bothered taking care of his teeth until it was far too late, and who fights a never-ending battle to pay ever-increasing dentist bills, and whose frequent visits to dentists over the past fifteen years have led to the development of Toothless Wonder’s one and only super-power: a slight immunity to Novocain…
The end result of this “power” of mine was that, despite several shots and the fact that my lower lip felt as if it had swollen to three times its normal size, I wasn’t completely numb when several of the teeth were pulled. This didn’t result in any sort of extreme “Marathon Man” levels of pain, but even so, it was quite painful.
Past experience had taught me, though, that there was nothing that could be done to completely eliminate the pain, so I had to simply not grin and bear it.
Prior to the actual extractions, as we waited for the numbness (incomplete though it may have been) to spread, the doctor’s cute-ish, though slightly too chubby assistant engaged me in conversation about the weather, which eventually meandered into different areas of discussion.
Of course, very early on she made reference to having a fiancé, though even if she had been single any chances I might have had with her would have been destroyed the instant she looked in my mouth, which, even before the extractions had rendered it a bloody mess, looked like a scene taken straight from a horror movie.
After all of the yanking was over the doctor stitched me up with self-dissolving stitches (I could feel the stitching taking place as well. Also not pleasant.), informed me that I had been a “marvelous” patient, and I was on my way.
I suppose I should be glad that they’d made me pay my contribution ($150+) up front before the procedure, which allowed me to just get the hell out of there without any fuss, but it still struck me as a bit mercenary.
From there I was on my way to the pharmacy at my local Giant to pick up my prescription for an anti-biotic and Vicodin, which the doctor had called in.
Or so he claimed, at any rate.
The pharmacy had received no call on my behalf.
I had to go out to my car and grab the bag of gauze and instructions the doctor had given me so that I could get the number and call in to verify that the prescription had been called in. The girl who answered assured me that he had called and that he’d left a message. The pharmacist checked her messages again and confirmed that he had not called, or rather, had not called there, as the number that I’d been told he’d called was not the number of the pharmacy.
I called back and gave them the correct number, to which the girl responded, “That’s not the number you gave us.”
Beginning to feel more than a little annoyed, I bit my tongue with my remaining teeth and kept myself from going off on her as I calmly explained that I’d never given them a number at all, as, prior to just getting the number from the pharmacist a minute earlier, I had no idea what the pharmacy’s number was.
Eventually the doctor’s office called the pharmacy and I was given a number and was forced to hang around at this shopping center killing time until my prescriptions were ready.
Sitting out on a bench in the humid 80+ degree weather, made all the more muggy by someone hosing down the sidewalk in front of the store, I felt like a character in a Chuck Palahniuk novel, given my misanthropic nature, my swollen lips, several missing teeth, and mouth full of blood.
I became increasingly irritated as the “Rx Ready” sign seemed perpetually stuck on “11” (my number was 14) and I ran out of things I could do to occupy my time at a strip mall that consists primarily of a grocery store, a Starbucks, various kinds of doctors’ offices, and a video store.
Eventually I decided to take a walk all the way around the shopping center, figuring that it would get me a little bit of exercise and kill a little more time.
One of the offices located in that center is my optometrist’s, which is where the woman I’ve referred to in the past as “Stone Face,” whom I had, mostly unsuccessfully, attempted to date quite a while back, had once worked.
It may be that she now works exclusively at one of the other offices, or that, as she mentioned she might, she’s moved back to Florida, but in any case it’s been quite some time since I last saw her.
However, as I walked around to the back of the shopping center, where most employees park, I spotted what I thought was her car, and it occurred to me that, after all this time, it would be just my luck to bump into her under my present circumstances.
It turned out not to be her car, or at least the car she had when I knew her, and at no point in my time-killing did I bump into her.
By the time my prescription was ready I was beginning to feel a bit woozy from the heat and because I hadn’t eaten any breakfast before going in for the extractions. So I was going on four hours with my only sustenance being whatever amounts of my own blood I had swallowed since my teeth had been pulled.
And while swallowing blood was in line with the doctor’s recommendation of limiting myself to a liquid diet for the next couple of days, it wasn’t exactly an ideal breakfast.
So once I had my drugs I came home and made myself a protein shake, popped my pills, and tried to take a nap.
My attempt at napping was a less-than-complete success, and so I find myself here, writing this.
I’ve never taken Vicodin before, and I have to say that so far, as what numbness there was wears off, I’m seeing its reputation for efficaciousness as largely undeserved.
Still, I think I may take another crack at the whole napping thing, which may aid the Vicodin in defending its reputation.