Note to self: Do not comment on painlessness of modern denistry until after the Novocaine wears off.

As far as I can tell, my jaw has gone supernova. I’ve taken two Vicodin, which should be enough to make a water ox lie on the floor and giggle at the ceiling, but it still feels not unlike someone has pried my teeth out, jammed the roots in a pencil sharpener, and then jammed the newly sharpened points back into my gum, which feels like living ground beef. This has resulted in about two dozen repeats of the following conversation:

James: How you doin’?
Me: Unngh. It hurts.
James: So the Vicodin isn’t working?
Me: It may be working very very well, that’s the scary part. How would I know?
James: Awww. (sympathetic noises.) (I have a nice husband.)

The funny thing about pain, though, is that anticipating pain is bad, and mysterious pain is scary and bad, but just plain jaw-shattering agony from a known source somehow isn’t as bad as it could be. There’s no anticipation–it hurts as bad now as it will five minutes from now. And there’s no fear–I know exactly why it hurts, I know approximately when it’ll stop (two days). So in a weird kinda way, it’s more bearable than it could be. It’s not just the root canal, though–I think part of the problem is the usual one you get from heavily medicated dentistry–when Novocained up, I had my jaw pressed open at an angle that would have been quite agonizing if I’d been able to feel it. Since I couldn’t, I kept it jammed open like that for about twenty minutes, strained the hell outta the muscle in the jaw, and now my jaw hinge is intent on taking vengeance on the brain that betrayed it by doing a one-mandible re-enactment of the Spanish Inquisition.

That’ll teach me to open my big mouth…