Ow

I've got this bad tooth, see...

The dentist can't fit me in until Friday.

It's been bad all week, and here in Pork Smith, since the pain clinic got busted four years ago, doctors are scared to prescribe pain meds -- yes, even to patients in pain -- and this guy won't give me any. He says I should use Advil.

In shit, I say.

I've done bad pain four times in my life: well, more than that, obviously, since I'm a migraine patient, but I'm counting the migraines as once. Four incidents of extreme pain: the gall bladder, the kidney stone, the migraines, labor, and now this.

People who haven't done serious pain have no notion of what it is like. Real pain is a different planet. A separate worldview.

One thing it does is make you scared of pain -- before I knew about real pain, I thought I was tough. I can take it, I used to think; but that was before real pain put me on my knees. Real pain blows your limits and takes you into the land beyond. That's where fear lives, and that's where you never want to be again. So you get to the state where you'll do what you have to do not to be in that place.

I hate pain now.

And here I am, with a mouth filled with it. And a dentist who thinks Advil is the answer.

For a week, now, I've been trying to box off real pain, armed only with Advil. (I called him twice, trying to get in early, and trying to get more help with the pain. No luck either time.)

Well, tomorrow I see the fucking dentist. He's lucky I'm a civilized socialist, that's all.