GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #208: MY SHIT TOOTH (REVISITED)

For those of you who have known me a while I've been having problems with my Shit Tooth for years. It all began when I started getting monstrously evil headaches, and I had no idea what caused them. I couldn't do anything about them at work, but when I got home I pounded whiskey to the point where I was downing 3/4 of a handle every night just to kill the pain. It was the only thing that worked. I went to several doctors, and none of them were able to solve the mystery until one of them came up with the brilliant plan to see a dentist.


I'd gone through most of my adult life without dental insurance. The last checkup I'd gotten was when I was getting into freshman year of high school. After that my grandparents, who raised me, lost their insurance plans. In 2007 I got a job that gave me benefits. (Just so you have a point of reference, I got into freshman year in 1992.) By that time I figured my teeth were fucked, and I didn't bother getting them checked out. To this day my mouth gives people The Fear.


I caved and went to the dentist. Apparently the tooth which would eventually be dubbed the Shit Tooth had a deep chip in it, which had exposed the nerve. The dentist put a giant filling on it, and everything went back to normal. Cool.


Fast forward a year. The Shit Tooth is killing me again. My alcohol use increased again. My dentist did a root canal and put a crown on the chip of tooth I had left back there.


A few weeks later I was eating pizza. Suddenly I took a bite and something seemed off. Something was missing. Holy shit, my tooth was gone! I have very little money. Crowns cost a lot even if you're insured. What did I do? I sifted through my shit for days looking for that crown. Hence, the Shit Tooth.


I never did find it, by the way. Not that it matters. It turns out the very little piece of tooth I had left had cracked. The dentist wouldn't have been able to put the crown back on.


This time he put a screw in my mouth to support the three centimeters of tooth I had left. It worked wonderfully after the crown got put on.


Fast forward to this year. My Shit Tooth acted up again. This time the dentist told me that there was decay built up under the crown. He sent me to another dentist out of hopes that it could be saved. The two options: remove the crown and drill out the decay, or cut into the gumline to drill out the decay. The other dentist said there was too much built up. The tooth had to go.


I've been through the process of an implant before. It sucks and it's expensive. I didn't want to do it. But I was told that if I didn't get it I would lose more of my teeth because the Shit Tooth took on a heavy burden in my under-bite.


I was going to go to another dentist to get the Shit Tooth pulled and to get an implant, but then SURPRISE! I got fired and lost my insurance. When I finally got a new job it took forever for my insurance to kick in. When it did I took a half-day to get a consultation. This was the day before I was going to go on a road trip with Kevin Strange to be on The Horror Show with Brian Keene. I thought the dentist was just going to take a look at it and schedule surgery for maybe two weeks later.


SURPRISE! It looked so bad that I was told it would crack out of my mouth over the weekend. The image of being interviewed by Brian Keene as I spat out my Shit Tooth horrified me, so I decided to do the emergency surgery then and there.


I should not have done that.


While the Shit Tooth is finally gone, it is still haunting me. Even now I have horrible pain in my mouth. The Orajel helps. The painkillers help, but they make me woozy. The whiskey is the best solution.


You know the phenomenon of phantom limbs? I have a phantom ghost tooth in my head right now, and it's killing me. (It doesn't help that I also have cadaver bone in my mouth to help make an implant possible. I don't know the guy or gal who donated it, but I do know that I've given Mike Lombardo a tickle in his tooth.) I've shoved a bunch of whiskey down my throat tonight, and it's only helping a little. I need this to go away. It would be so awesome to have just one day where I wake up and don't feel any pain in my mouth. I need that to happen tomorrow.


Goodnight, you wonderful people. Thanks for listening to me rant about this garbage.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #164: STATE OF MY HEALTH

It's been a while since I mentioned my health around here. Once again, I'm trying to quit fast food and sugary drinks (except for my morning Tang). How did I do today? I knew I'd have a lemonade in the morning, but after that? I did OK. No fast food. Nothing beyond that lemonade.


Oh! And, uh, I plan on cutting back severely on my booze intake. Don't worry! It's not a permanent change. I just need to lose some weight soon, or my doctor will kill me.


*ahem* I won't be cutting back much on the booze, though. Not while I'm afraid I have broken my tailbone again. Right now, the only thing that makes me feel normal is drinking. My tailbone kills me, otherwise. The aspirin and ibuprofen isn't working. I'm going to see if I can get into the doctor who looked at me the last time I broke my tailbone. I want to skip all the ER visits and the X-rays and stuff and just skip ahead to the painkillers. Not because I love the painkillers (which I do), but because it's all so fucking expensive. I can feel that my tailbone is broken. There is nothing they can do to fix it except give me painkillers to get through the next three months. That's all I ask.


But yeah. If I get the painkillers, I'll scale back on the drinking severely. If not? Well, I expect to be hungover a lot in the next few months. That can't be good for my pancreas. Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #143: A DAY WELL SPENT (?)

When I took this week off, I did so with the understanding that I would do next to nothing the whole time, that I would stay off my ass due to my broken tailbone to give it a chance to heal before I had to go back to my desk job, where I spend 8 hours a day sitting on the broken bone that should be healing. A lot of shit came up. There's some shit that I'm not ready to talk about yet. It's fucking grim, but I . . . I'm just not ready to go there yet.

Today, I promised myself I would do nothing but indulge my new Netflix habit. The only thing I did today was cash my paycheck. Aside from that, I spent the day in bed watching Netflix, and I'm very proud of that. I loaded down with painkillers and stayed off my ass. The only time I sat down was long enough to drive to the bank on my doughnut. And to McDonald's for lunch. But that's it. How did my day go?

Very nice, actually. I remember being an hour in and feeling very distant from myself, as if I were floating above my body watching me watching Netflix. Wonderful. My entire body was numb, and I didn't even want to move to dispel the feeling.

And then I turned over. Much to my surprise, I had a heavy dick. Usually that's a nice feeling, but today it was annoying. It was made even worse by the hole in my boxers, which I kept sticking out of. My dick got in the way of everything as I shifted around to make sure none of my body started suffering pins and needles. My balls annoyed me even more because they hung down waaaaaay lower than usual. I had to keep them out of the way when I took a shit earlier today.

By the sixth hour, the inevitable happened: my heavy dick turned into a full-on erection. Nothing prompted it, which is kind of weird. Usually, at the very least it takes a car ride to get things moving down there. This came as a result of nothing. There wasn't even a sexually suggestive scene on Netflix. It just happened.

I decided to get rid of this unwanted boner. It took me a while to find a comfortable position, and I started jerking off. Except . . . I didn't feel anything. My entire body, my dick included, felt numb. These painkillers took away the joy of masturbation. How horrible is that?

Not that bad, actually. I'd rather have no pain and an awkward hard-on than have a satisfied dick with horrible pain. Still, this marks the first time I've ever failed to jerk off. Although I am getting used to these pills, so . . . I wonder if I need to start doubling up on this shit. Ha-ha, just kidding. I think.

I just realized that it would have been very awkward if I'd died in that moment. How often do paramedics have to haul out corpses with full hard-ons? I keep thinking about the body bag tenting up in the middle, and reporters staring at it, laughing with their hands over their microphones.

Tomorrow is the last day of my vacation, and I have to do shit, sadly. But I hope to dedicate most of my day to further exploration of Netflix. That feeling of zoning out to nearly the point of paralysis? That felt pretty good. Peaceful. I'd like to experience that again before I have to go to work.