Bizarro Weekend pt. 3 and beyond

So, remember that pain I mentioned a few posts ago? Well, in the middle of the night I woke up with some severe pain coming from the top right molars. I took some Advil and, eventually, was able to get back to sleep. I woke up on Sunday morning with a message from my third molar, "Ok, you've lived it up and never took care of me when you had the chance, well, now it's time to pay the piper." I went to church and was barely able to take communion as I was unable to open my mouth wider than a finger. I came home and sat around my house for the rest of the day, too clouded with pain coming from just underneath my brain to do anything.

All last year in America, I kept thinking, "You know, over Christmas break/Easter break/ summer break, I should really take care of those wisdom teeth." But, of course, I didn't want to ruin my precious time away from work being laid up. So, on Monday morning I went to school and explained to my director my position. She was very helpful and the school secretary made an appointment for me that afternoon and the director's husband came and picked me up. 

Was I concerned about possibly having major oral surgery done in foreign land with a well-known disregard for human life? Not really, and if you knew the dentist I had in my childhood, you'd know why. This guy, Doc Farrell, was a butcher. For example, as a boy, I went to him to have a few teeth pulled. He forgot to numb one of the teeth and ripped it out despite my best attempts to communicate that I was quite sensate in that particular area. But he was cheap, so we continued to frequent his abattoir. It is no wonder that dental tourism is fast becoming a tradition amongst my brother and sisters (for further reading see "Slagles, Philippine Adventures of the")

So, I arrive at the dentist, and before I've even finished filling out the paperwork, they called me in. The dentist spoke decent English (he told me had studied for a year in Atlanta) and he opened up my mouth, had a quick look and said, "Yes. Vi'll neet to egstrakt it." So, I got a few shots and he started digging around. I didn't know if this was going to require me being put under or what (the method of "egstrakshun" was never really communicated to me), but I was encouraged in that I heard the word "good" mentioned a few times between the dentist and his assistant. At one point he asked me if everything was ok. I said, "Lla, nar'lnhha." It's tough to speak Russian with the right side of your face novocained and an instrument or two in your mouth. And before I knew it, he told me that we were finished and shoved a thing of gauze into my mouth. He wrote down the name of some antibiotics for me (I don't even know if there is a Russian word for "prescription." You just show up to the drugstore and convince whoever is working that you need such and such) and that was it. In and out in less than hour and for less than $100 and (unfortunately) back at work the next day.

I wanted to ask the dentist if he could drill a hole through the tooth before I left, to make it easy for me to make a necklace out of it (see http://museumvictoria.com.au/fiji/images/mn011702_lg.jpg ), but my vocabulary is rather limited and my desire to communicate anything for the next several hours was severely diminished.