tiny victories

So I’ve been hiding bursts of week-long chronic pain for the past fifteen years. Save for those with whom I’ve been closest, sharing love or four walls or both, I’ve kept it to myself. I knew it to be irrational that I never got this taken care of, but: My major phobia is - as self-sabotaging as it sounds - the dentist. Let alone the idea of oral surgery.

It would come in hot, sharp flashes and dull itself to a muted all-day agony, sometimes two weeks of tossing & turning sleeplessness at a time. It would subside, seemingly moments after I had reconciled with myself that professional help & not overmedication & waiting would be the solution. I’d file these experiences away as triumphs over my mutineering body, somehow allowing myself to feel a sense of honor regarding the whole matter - As if I had willed it away, defeated it.

Then came the fevers. Since around July or so, and possibly stretching further back if I actually give it some thought, I’ve been uncharacteristically sick. Fevers monthly, if not bi-weekly. Inflammation, infection traveling from its source. Contamination. The vise around my jaw tightened, the night-sweats & shaking 3am medicine cabinet raids became part of my routine, you could set a clock to them. One can wage a pretty accurate guess, I’m sure, as to what havoc it wrecked on my disposition. Lily read up on all the various ways that I may be dying.

My upper right 2nd molar cracked on a tortilla chip the day before the Fitchburg-Longsjo Stage Race. A week and a half later, possibly due to my body’s interest in symmetry, my upper left 2nd molar also cracked. This left me with no side of my mouth on which that I could painlessly chew my food.

Even so, the pain would subside for weeks at a time. I googled “Emergency Dental” more times than I’d care to recount, but froze up upon reaching the second-to-last number into my phone… Until last Tuesday.

I called my parents. My parents called their friend Peter, a dentist in Natick. I saw Peter on Friday morning, and was swiftly sent to Wayland for a consultation with an oral surgeon named Koo. Spent a solid 15 minutes being zapped by radiation. He wanted to then & there remove four of my teeth: The two broken molars & my bottom two wisdom teeth.

To the best of my understanding, nerves had wrapped themselves around the roots of these wisdom teeth. My head was filled with all sorts of possibilties & disclaimers, the worst of which being the “extreme possibility” (verbatim) that I would lose feeling to my face, if not permanently then for a bit. Head swirling, and maybe half-stupidly, I declined the on-the-spot treatment, because - fuck - if I’m going to be laid-up, I’m going to race the Cycle-Smart International beforehand. Plus, what’s two more days? I’ve already been waiting fifteen years for this.

My appointment: 8:30am on Monday. My phobia. The fear had wrapped its strangling tentacles around me well before I even packed the car to leave for the races. Everything I did was informed by the knowledge that Monday would quite possibly be a very negative turning point in my life, or maybe - when viewed under a less fear-stricken lens - a very positive one. Lily was focused on the latter, as were most of my friends. Though: anyone who has ever posessed an irrational fear can tell you that the gnawing cannot be reasoned away. They’re there, mine was an albatross on my shoulder all weekend, and my racing suffered. Whatever.

So I woke up at 7am on Monday.

Took my 4x amoxicillin on an empty stomach with as tiny a sip of water as possible, per doctor’s orders. Got in Lily’s car & tried shakingly to dispense with my fear, to fully absorb the music on the stereo, the rhythm of the raindrops hitting the windshield. Plodded the death march from the car to the elevator to the office to the leather chair. Made small talk with an elevated heart rate as I waited for the drugs to put me under.

Then I was home, in bed.

So here is what I learned, both from Lily & from a phone call I received from Dr. Koo hours & hours later:

This was one of the most difficult surgeries that he has had to perform.

I flatlined a few times during the procedure.

Part of my jaw broke, but not all the way through & we can hope for it to heal. Failing that, I will need to get another tooth removed.

We are both optimistic about recovering full feeling in my face. As it stands, the feelings I’m experiencing are a muted pain cloaked under a narcotic haze, a slight and troubling numbness that is mostly concentrated in my lower lip but spreads to my left outward through my cheek a bit, and just complete & utter shock that I actually went through with this.

See, the urge was to blow it off. Then I got to thinking: This is going to be a huge change. An opportunity to rid myself of what I’m assuming to be the root of a good deal of my negativity. The cause of chronic sickness. What I am blaming for an underwhelming cyclocross season. The opportunity to start fresh, to not spend days in bed rather than on my bicycle, to be less moody and impatient with those around me. And you know - if the process of fixing this problem precipitates unwanted results, it probably would’ve anyway had I allowed the situation to continue to decay.

So I’m cautiously hopeful & dedicated to making the most of whatever good health comes from all of this. I’ll try my best to not take my wellbeing for granted, and to take full advantage of the opportunities that it opens up for me. I may be well enough to race again before long - my worries about missing out were misplaced.

I feel like I’m on my way to have completely rid myself of both my paramount weakness & the pinnacle of my fears, and I couldn’t feel better about it.

(I write this as I shovel a few more pills into myself & hope for a restful sleep…)