The Sun Rises over the West Bank

Native New Orleanians always love to take their visitors down to the French Quarter in the morning and point out that the sun rises there over the west bank of the river. Indeed, there are lots of places where that happens around New Orleans because here the river tracks more of an west-east route than a north-south one.

When I woke up this morning, I was shocked. The pain in my tooth was practically gone, thanks, I suppose, either to the effect of the antibiotic or divine intervention. Based on past experience, I'm going to have to go with the former. So I went out a little early to log some miles since the temperature was in the 50s and the forecast for Tuesday morning is not good. I rode alone for quite a while, but eventually came across Howard around where I was going to turn around, so we rode back downriver together. It felt great to be on the bike this morning, even though I had a root canal in my immediate future.

I hadn't even left for work when the dentist called, and then the endodontist, setting me up for a $950 root canal at 2:15. I continued on the antibiotic I'd been taking since Sunday morning, but the pain medicine was no longer needed. So I get to the endodontist and he starts to dig in, and he and his assistant remark that it's no surprise the tooth was painful because it was kind of nasty in there. He easily found a small abscess and went to work cutting out the nerves as I lounged in the comfort of novocaine or whatever the painkiller of choice is nowadays. It all went reasonably smoothly, and although I wasn't too happy about it, at least it confirmed my infection theory. My dentist had failed to see evidence of an abscess on Friday when he took his x-ray, but then again things didn't really go south until Saturday.

So anyway, I wrote the big check and headed back to the office relieved that it had finally been taken care of. That is, until around 4:30 when I suddenly started having severe chills, complete with shivering. Damn. Some of those bacteria from the abscess, or at least their endotoxins, must have gotten loose despite the endodontist's liberal use of what smelled for all the world like diluted Chlorox. I headed home, grabbed a warm blanket and waited. Soon, the chills turned to a fever (they always do, don't they?). I had already taken a somewhat early dose of antibiotic along with an Advil, and eventually things subsided and my appetite kicked in. I figured a big bowl of vanilla ice cream was just the Root Canal Therapy (RCT) the doctor would have ordered, if I'd been able to contact one. Jorge, the club's resident dentist, had emailed me earlier, which is how I learned the special "RCT" lingo. So hopefully this little post-surgical event is over. I'll see what the endodontist says first thing tomorrow morning.