Wow!  This is the second time in the last three years I have suffered over Christmas.  Not the usual BS (commercials, cheap Chinese toys, you get the drift) but a goddam tooth ache.  Why this is related to “Flavors of Alabama” you will understand shortly.  Why I am even writing this escapes even me.

I must note that I may have suffered over a lot more Christmases but my memory of the early years is poor.  Okay, I can’t remember anything before age 21.  Happy?

What I mostly remember about that Christmas is that our daughter was visiting.  We had a great time despite me being in severe pain and all the cognac I was compelled to drink.  The cause of the toothache was a broken molar.  Of course I was too lazy to do anything about it before the holidays.  It was an outrage that the dentist was closed on Christmas Eve.  Henceforth my fate was set.

It was a son-of-a-bitch. I got some ointment and kept dumping it on.  It didn’t work real well.  I found out later I was putting it on the wrong tooth.  I tried nearly everything short of pulling it out with a pliers.  Doorknobs work only on the front teeth.

The toothache of Christmas 2012 finally came to an end.  You’d think I would remember how but I don’t.  I do remember that I had a root canal a few moths later after we moved to Alabama.  I will soon discover that things are backwards here in Alabama so it is not surprising that the root canal procedure was very enjoyable.

I was told by the dentist that all was good.  Right.  December 23, 2014 is a day where I want to go back and (put your favorite revenge word here) my dentist *and* my new doctor.  I awoke in searing pain that got a lot worse in only a few minutes.  Then it got real bad.  I don’t understand why, on the scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being “intolerable” pain, that 9 or less is tolerable.  I think they ought to change the scale so anything over 5 is intolerable.  Pain sucks!

I didn’t want a repeat of 2012 so I called up the dentist.  Notice that I don’t say “my” dentist anymore.  I don’t have a doctor either.  The dentist was closed and there was no emergency number.  There are never dental emergencies over the holidays, only mental.  I was surprised and relieved that the doctor could see me.  He told me that he  couldn’t give me “anything” (code word for hard drugs) for the tooth pain.  I am not sure he even believed I had a toothache since he found puss coming out of my ear on the same side as the toothache.  He did give me antibiotics though.  I hope the desperation he saw in my eyes haunts him for eternity.  (Same for all you other bastards who didn’t give pain pills to your patients.)

I left the doctors office nearly in tears of anticipation of the suffering that was about to befall me.  I was already loaded up on everything you could think of (except alcohol since I quit just after that the first episode).  Trust me, if there had been someone on a street corner with some drugs I would have bought some.  For I had been blessed with both a toothache and an infected ear.

Four days later, the pain level is down to a 3 or 4.  But it is still a distraction.  Also I still can’t eat anything on that side of my jaw.  Not even soup.  I think the antibiotics are helping.  I finally recall now how having earaches as a child and that they were, as now, painful in a sharp kind of way.  It made me wonder if the CIA used knives-in-the-ole-eardrum as a torture method.  It seemed to me a possible relief mechanism.  Remember what I said about what is tolerable.  I am looking forward to that root canal.  Nah – I’ll save some money and get it pulled.

I almost forgot to tell you how this relates to “Flavors of Alabama.”  If you read my previous blog about the muscadine jelly, you would know that it is very good and tasty; so much so that I have almost convinced my toothless brother in California to get a tooth put back so he can get a cavity.  He is still laughing.