Blood, Cloves, & the All-Time Favorite Dreaded Dry Socket
Friday, February 03, 2006
[12:52pm] It grew increasingly odd that week – the effects of the pulled teeth. Surprisingly, it grew worse and worse, not better and better. Monday was by far the painless day of the entire operation. But she could hardly complain about it. Every few hours she still had some relief from the pain which could now be felt in her other teeth, her sinuses, odd parts of her head, neck, and ears.
After Mom had talked with Mrs. English and Denae, however, over at their Friday get-together, they both encouraged Collette to call the doctor. The pain was supposed to have ended by that time in the week. And so Collette called and arranged an appointment for 4:45 in the afternoon.
[7:44pm] Oh, the pain – Collette had not quite experienced anything like it before. Perhaps dental work was particularly painful; she couldn’t say for sure. After waiting an extra 35 minutes (as Dr. Rosenthal was running behind; there had been a complication with someone’s surgery, earlier) he came in and checked her gum. He was very kind, prescribed another dose of pain medication, and sent in the nurse to administer medicine and dressing for her, yes – dry socket.
“I’m sorry you had to get this, honey,” she said, looking over Collette’s file on the computer. “You had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it; you can only get dry socket in the bottom teeth. And I was hoping you wouldn’t, because you only had that one bottom tooth pulled…”
Collette was very envious of Violet at that moment, who had only had her top two teeth pulled – a completely painless operation. The nurse handed Collette a small cup wrapped in a tissue, held a syringe with a frightening looking rubber tip of some sea green liquid and plunged it into the back of her mouth. Collette cringed as it filled her gum. She spit a mouthful of blood and remaining liquid into the cup. Then the nurse took a small piece of light brown wadding and pressed it in the same location. It reeked of hot cloves and she nearly choked as she hurried to the sink and coughed out mouthfuls of blood and burning clove-saturated liquid. The nurse squeezed a large piece of gauze between her teeth and removed it a few minutes later as tears came to Collette’s eyes.
“Sorry. I know it hurts. You’ll feel better,” she encouraged.
Collette nodded, trying to smile. Rarely had she felt compelled to cry over pain. But this time it was a bit too much not to see some tears in her eyes. About half an hour later, the pain began to subside, although as she and Mom hurried out into the dark cold to the van, she thought she might as well end it right there. At home, by 7:30 she had taken the medicine, eaten 2/3 of another malt, and felt worlds better – enough to offer to help Frances with his math homework.
She had been reading Job that day, and wondered what sort of a miserable character she might be were she ever in such a position. If she could barely make it through dry socket… But God never gave her more than she could bear – spiritually, mentally, or physically. He would take her home before such a thing would happen.
Meanwhile, Mom, Collette, Frances, and Linnea watched “I Love Lucy” and Louis Tecumseh called from school at Westminster asking if Carrie would like to come out to a party that night. Carrie, however, was at work. And OLeif, Joe, and Rose were with the youth watching and discussing John Piper’s “Blazing Center.”