It took 32 years for this abscess to develop. And it had to come to fruition the first week of graduate school.
When I was eight, a kid hit into me in the swimming pool. That tooth was somewhere between my mouth and my hand and my jaw was broken. The dentist saved the tooth, but apparently it was the beginning of the end.
But I did manage to keep up on homework.
Boy, I should really keep up on your blog. Sorry to hear about the dental trouble. I identify, though so far, no abcesses. To compensate, I’ve knocked out my front teeth (joys of cycling), which required some excruciating moments in the dental chair to put half-way right (my nice natural teeth were goners; I have a nice bridge up there now). And earlier this summer, I had all four wisdom teeth extracted sans sedation. Wowie wow wow wow. This made me, too, reflect on what the heck people did about all this stuff before the advent of effective anesthetics. Best find: a passage from Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks” that details a root canal, I think. Holy Toledo.