My Pain Threshold is a Winner

All those years of thinking that I was a wimp. A whiner. Total reveal: my horrid family nickname, as a kid, was Janet Whiner W---. Turns out, like so many of our, I mean my, least cherished memories of childhood, not to be true. Turns out that I have a super-humanly high pain threshold. Another win for competitive me!

Two years ago, emergency surgery after no pain. I had to persuade the emergency room doctor to admit me. Luckily, he was a good doctor and listened. Today, high-tech dental machinery reveals that I have a hole in my gum. No pain, no headaches, not hot or cold sensations. A few weeks ago, a feeling like my wisdom tooth was coming in, but they've been gone since 1974 or so. (Yes, I am that old, and my birthday is coming up, again.) Then, no pain, so I canceled my dentist's appointment because of something going on at work. Yesterday, I had some odd symptoms, so I called this morning and managed to get an appointment for 11:30 am.

My very young dentist took a look, took a fancy-shmancy picture and then put it up on the flat screen t.v. to show me the hole. We all marveled, and then he handed me off to the root canal guy. The even younger root canal guy came in (have all dentists suddenly become 19 years old?), took a look, and did some low-tech tests involving spraying something very very cold onto a tiny tiny cotton ball, which he touched to each tooth. He left the room for a while. I cried a bit, because the thing that I dread more than anything is the thought of a root canal. Then he came back, very carefully hedged his bets but said that he didn't think that it was a root canal issue, and passed me along to the oral surgeon guy.

The oral surgeon was also young, but mainly very silly. Like every doctor I've seen in the last two years, he proclaimed that my case was "weird." He suggested that I might be an alien, but I told him that I'd only seen the first two seasons of X-Files so I couldn't comment. Then he sent me for a crazy X-ray involving a camera that pans around your head as you bite down onto a metal fork to keep from moving your head. (I am not kidding.) And, just to build up the suspense, he promised me that because he watches CSI, that he had solved the case and had a theory for the hole, and would reveal it to me after the X-ray. I could hardly wait.

Because all of the above is Too Much Information, I'm not going to tell you the theory, Maybe it's right, maybe not. I'm on an antibiotic, can't do any serious breathwork/pranayama if I manage to make it out of town next week for my next yoga therapy training, and am hoping that I'll heal and won't have to do anything else to remedy this weirdness. I guess the good news is that, if there was a competition for Highest Pain Threshold, I'd be a contender.

Knitting news: beautiful scarves from Jan, a neighbor who has moved to Wisconsin. Both from wool from a farmer who lives near her. Pictures tomorrow, maybe. I think that brings us to 25, and a few more are in the mail. Yeah! I'd like to hit at least 100 scarves to donate to Housing Opportunities for Women. Who's going to join me Thursday night at the Knitche in Downers Grove? Excellent root beer, conversation, yarn, and knitting, perhaps.