Poor Mark.

He was at the doctor's last night for a regular appointment. He mentioned that he's had a tooth bothering him for the past few days.

One thing let to another, which led to his taking today off to go to a dental surgeon. He has an abscessed tooth, which is killing him, but he has to wait a week for the swelling to go down before he can get a root canal.

A WEEK! I've had a couple of abscessed teeth -- fortunately, it was baby teeth both times, so they could just pull them and be done with them. But HOLY COW. That first abscess, which occurred in a tooth that had recently been filled, was unquestionably among the worst pain I have ever felt. Between the excruciating pain and the sudden spike of fever, that episode resulted in my one and only visit to Children's Hospital's emergency room. I won't go too far into the gory details, but let's say that TEN novocaine shots weren't enough to kill the pain of having the tooth pulled. Especially when the bleeping thing broke into four pieces and turned into a nightmare extraction from H3ll.

So you can imagine why 33 years later, just hearing the word "abscess" still makes me cringe. That's a potentially hideous set of symptoms.

So I feel terrible for Mark, that he's got to deal with this freakin' thing for a week. UGH. Fortunately, he's got antibiotics and ibuprofen to battle the symptoms with. I hope they're effective enough to keep the symptoms at bay and keep this week an uneventful one.