The consolations of late dentistry

(with apologies to Boethius)

Hello, friends. Tomorrow, I am having a “part boney impaction section” – that is, a wisdom tooth pulled. Yes, at my age!

I know, I know: this is a very small thing. I am healthy, I have insurance that covers much of the cost, and I can spare the time – even if it doesn’t feel like I can. Still, I am WORRIED about the whole thing. (I don’t know how much worry is reasonable. Definitely some, since possible side effects include losing the adjacent tooth and permanent nerve damage?) Also of concern: when I asked the dental surgeon what the optimal outcome looked like, he said, “Optimally, you would hop into your time machine and travel back to when you were fifteen and have all four wisdom teeth pulled, because your young body would be able to repair any nerve damage.” Har. Har. Har.

Anyway, I have assembled the following – ahem – consolations to see me through this unpleasant ordeal:

• Two chapters of a friend’s WIP set in the late C19, which I am to read for authenticity.
• Coconut ice cream, made with the last of the gula malacca my mother brought back from Malaysia. (I bought the rest of the family some other flavours but I will be eating this whole batch of homemade ice cream myself. For medicinal reasons.)
• E. K. Johnston’s A Thousand Nights, which I bought in October but have been saving for this occasion.
• This conversation between Caitlin Moran and Lena Dunham.

And by the time I’ve recovered, it’ll be the Year of the Monkey. Huzzah! Hope you have a week that’s rich in good reading, ice cream, feminist wisecracks, terrible puns on famous philosophical treatises you’ve never actually read, and whatever else gets you through.

*Update: it went fine! No nerve damage, and the surgeon gave me the tooth in a baggie. In fact, I warmed to him even before the ghoulish parting gift. As he was getting set up, I asked him why he’d become an oral surgeon and he said his main interest is facial reconstruction. Now THAT’s fascinating!