it's gone

The tooth is gone. I woke up this morning at 4 a.m. in agony, came downstairs, got a bag of frozen corn out of the freezer and held it on my face for 2 hours. I didn't go into work. I couldn't. I HAD to find a way to relieve this pain. That relief came in the form of a kindly old man - Dr. DiSalvo. He was one of the oral surgeons who did not have any available appointments until August (when I called his office last week) but I called again this morning. I was ready to beg...but I didn't have to. They had a cancellation and he could see me at 10:45. I cried in relief then and I cried again in his chair, poor guy. He said "Are you scared?" and I said no - I was just so glad he could help me. Pain is a horrible thing...it makes you think crazy things. Dr. DiSalvo gave me two quick shots of novacaine (at this point, even the shots felt better than the pain in my head and jaw), and he pried that tooth out of my jaw in about one minute. Literally. One minute. I was out of his office fifteen minutes after I went in.
My head is free of pain and my jaw is (surprisingly) also pain-free. It was a bad tooth. And the bad tooth is gone...