It hurts to yawn

Thursday, Mar. 01, 2007, 11:38 p.m.

Holy mother of a shitting walrus. If anybody ever again says to me, "Would you like to get three wisdom teeth pulled during the middle of your division's field training exercise, which also happens to be, oh, three and a half or so weeks before a deployment, while your office is understaffed and not many people really give a shit about your recovery?" I will probably punch that person straight in the mouth so that they can be in the exact same amount of pain that I've been in for the last eight days, except the days when the pain pills kicked in.

Okay. Deep breath, and I will start from the beginning, which will kind of overlap the last entry, but the last entry doesn't count due to the wonderful Judgement Distortion Pills that I was happily gulping down as I wrote it.

During our pre-deployment health screening, the Army dentists informed me that my three wisdom teeth had spent just about enough time messing up my perfect, gleaming smile, and it was time for them to be gotten out of there.

"Ow," I contemplated, remembering the last time I underwent such a procedure.

I'm not going to go into detail about the process -- since it is obvious that I lived through the whole "being put under" part and I've never heard of a life-threatening disease being caused by the desire to just rip one's fucking gums out and throw them away because the swollenness, it is too much -- or about my almost deafeningly boring three days of bed-rest afterward, but I will say that the Army doesn't care about sick people.

When did I get those teeth pulled? Wednesday? All right, well, I had been told by the dentist (pre-tooth-extraction) that I "should" be able to function semi-normally the very next day after The Yanking, and that I should be practically good as new two days after that. Sooooo I told my bosses that if they gave me permission to go ahead and get my teeth pulled now (instead of waiting till we get to Iraq), I would be back at work by Saturday, no problem, I promise.

Except, fuck me, and fuck my promises, because if you thought my face was swollen and tender last time when there was only one tooth coming out ... oh ho NO, my friends. The left side of my face grew to roughly the size of the federal deficit. And the next morning, the dreaded call came.

"Um, hey, this is the people you work for."

"Mmmphgrfuck."

"Yeah, remember how you said that you'd be well enough to come in to the office and get issued your new uniforms and body armor plates and bring in your duffel bags today?"

"Grmph."

"Well, you're going to have to do that."

"Phrglmphnotdrivinganyfuckingwherempph."

"We'll come and pick you up."

"Brmphdammit."

"See you soon!"

And the thing is, even with the swollen face, I probably would have been fine to go and do the things I needed to do -- except for the whole thing where I started vomiting pain pills up in the middle of the night.

Ah, sweet Nausea. You give my toilet a second use.

So when my ride arrived to bring me to the office, not only was I barely mobile (due to the pain), but I was also barely coherent (due to the swelling) and barely conscious (due to lack of sleep) (see above, re: vomiting all damn night). And it was a productive day, lemme tell ya. The annoyance of the work that had to get done was exponentially worsened, partially due to the lack of amused sympathy my sergeant displayed ("Ha! Your face! Have you seen it? HA!") and partially because of my constant bitching about pretty much everything that caused me to feel pain, throw up, have a swollen face and denounce oral surgery altogether. (In case you never noticed, I tend to bitch about things pretty regularly. If I am in physical pain, the bitching is upgraded to whining, and its decibel level is increased considerably. But I digress.)

With some help, I was able to get everything done that I needed to at the office, get some anti-nausea medication from the dentist, and get home without making the inside of anybody's new car a nice scent of throw-up. After that, all I had to do was rest up for a few days and get better, right? Oh, but not really.

Sunday night, still swollen but out of pain pills, I got a phone call.

"Hey, um, sorry, but we need you to come in and pull a shift out here at the field site tonight."

"MGRPMHPAIN!"

"Yeah, we know, and we're sorry; we didn't want to have to do this, but you did say you'd be better by now, and we're really understaffed, and [Head Boss] told us to get you out here. Oh, and pack your stuff; you'll be staying out here for a few nights."

"!!!"

"Be at the company to draw your weapon in forty-five minutes, okay? Thanks!"

Again, this all wouldn't have been so bad IF ONLY ... my pain pills hadn't run out two days before. I had been surviving for the past twenty-four hours on ice cream, freezer packs and pudding. My entire focus was on Monday morning, when the dentist's office would reopen and the glories of heaven and oxycodone would rain down on me. The news that I would have to go to work all night and then sleep in a yucky bunk bed was not exactly what I had been hoping for.

I went to work visibly unhappy (because when I am in pain and annoyed, EVERYONE is in pain and annoyed, dammit!), completed my primary task in about a half hour, sat in a chair and prepared to moan my way through the rest of a standard thirteen-hour shift. But then I realized, "Hmm. I really am in quite a lot of pain. My eyes are watering, my face is expanding further outward by the second, and I can't open my mouth more than a half-inch wide. Perhaps I qualify for emergency room attention."

So, I persuaded my already-tired and overworked boss to take me to the ER where, shockingly, I only had to wait about twenty minutes (long enough to see Martin Scorcese finally win his fucking Oscar, geez) before being seen by a qualified professional who took my temperature and blood pressure, then handed me four Vic0dins and told me to go immediately to the dentist in the morning. Which was the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it.

The next morning, still feeling a little stoned, I went to the dentist. He prescribed me forty (40!) Perc0cets and 24 hours of rest. Thus, I ask you: what does one do with such a large quantity of pain pills in such a short time? Because I mostly slept through the whole thing, and I have a feeling I could have been enjoying the experience much more.

Tuesday morning, I went to work on the day shift, still contentedly numb and sufficiently effective as a living human to do my job (namely, doing what my officers say to do, as well as facilitating propaganda). Here it is Thursday and I still have a couple dozen pills left, plus I look less like a radioactive chipmunk than I did earlier this week, so I don't think I'll really mind working this weekend.

Oh, yeah, of course we're working this weekend instead of spending it with our families, or by doing all the necessary things we need to get done before deployment. Would the Army have it any other way?

Speaking of the Way Things Are Done, I'm reading a fantastic book right now called Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order by Mark Crispin Miller. My mother-in-law sent it to me, and I highly recommend it for all your presidental-administration-hating needs. It's really, really good for non-politically-minded people like me who know we are getting fucked over/up/around by this government, but want to be reminded of exactly why that is. Read it. Now. Go and get it; no excuses allowed. And no, there is no try, only do or or do not. (Hello, Star Wars geeks! Feeling a bit left out, were you? Not for long!)

I received a brilliant spam e-mail today, and wanted to share it with all of you, who will hopefully find it as funny as I did after not getting a whole hell of a lot of sleep last night. It begins like this:

"Hi, I hate to be the one to mention this, but people continue to
talk about your weight issue and it just disgusts me. Whether you
know it by now, people are always chattering about each other at
work but you come up more than enough."

That actually kind of made my day.

The yawning and jaw soreness are reminding me that it's time for me to go to sleep. Good night!