Helluva way to spend a Tuesday morning

I'm back home after a stressful couple of hours with an endodontist.

This morning's exercise in discomfort was a apicoectomy and  retrograde filling.

Translated, that means he sliced into the gum on the outside of my lower back left tooth and scraped away the jaw bone to excavate a pocket of infection below the root that was the result of a botched root canal a few years ago by an Indianapolis endodontist. Then he filled in the crater and stitched up my gum with a half-dozen sutures.

All for a mere $727.

I was offered nitrous oxide, but declined. I hate the smell of that stuff.

Now, three hours later, the left half of my jaw and my tongue are still numb, but I can feel an occasional twinge of pain that tells me this could get ugly soon. Time to refresh the ice pack.

I get to go back Thursday morning to have the sutures removed.