Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 08/05/24
Marathon Man School of Dentistry edition
Administration would like to apologize for the delay in issuing this weekly missive. I have been pretty much unable to type coherently since Thursday.
Update From the Agency of Health and Wellness
I made light of my impending date with the oral surgeon last week. Even though I knew there would be a big extraction in my immediate future, I was about as braced for a wisdom tooth yanking as expected. I’d done this before, and as an adult, no less, so there was no big mystery.
Granted, the extraction would be a little complicated; my holdout wisdom tooth came in at not-quite a 90 degree angle, until the crown of the wisdom tooth made contact with the root of my back molar. Ouch. That wisdom tooth continued to push on the root until it impacted and then infected the molar, which infected the wisdom tooth. Double ouch. There’s only one solution; yank the molar, and then go down and across, There Will Be Blood style, and drink the milksh—I mean, extract the wisdom tooth. Oh, and that wisdom tooth had long roots, too, longer than the tooth itself. Outstanding.
I wish I had a picture of that X-ray. You wouldn’t believe it. My impacted wisdom tooth looked like a sonar picture of a giant squid. Still, I expected these little complications to be part of the job training as an oral surgeon. Surely my case was not unique. I’m trying to be my usual jocular self, but I don’t know if I can do it. I’m still messed up by what happened.
Longtime readers of the blog will recall that I am no stranger to surgery, and I’m quite lousy at it. The past six years have seen more needles and IVs stuck in me than the previous forty-five years. That’s my kryptonite, right there. I don’t like them; stories of my fainting and collapsing and panic attacks are the highlight reel at the annual Texas Phlebotomists and Medical Vampires Association Christmas party. However, in the overall scheme of things, the shots at the dentist, for some unknown reason, are not as panic-inducing. Most of the time, I just need a little giggle gas and I’m good to go.
IVs are another matter entirely, but here’s the deal; once I’m juice boxed up, I’m not so bad. The oral surgeon offered me the use of the hospital to place the IV, where they would use ultrasound to find a good spot so that they wouldn’t have to keep trying. I told the doc I had Xanax for the big day, too, and she instead prescribed a Lorazepam for the day of—don’t ask me why Xanax wasn’t good enough.
The night before surgery always sucks, but I was bound and determined to relax, give into the process, and try to make myself as pliable and as agreeable as possible. I actually got good sleep, about seven hours. Then I popped the downer and we took off for the oral surgeon’s office, in Wichita Falls.
The hospital was pretty uneventful, overall. Sure, my blood pressure spiked, but that’s because they were inserting a crazy straw into my arm. I get anxious when they do that. Despite all of that, the nurse was actually very good and didn’t try to tell me what she was doing, which never goes well. After about 15 minutes, with my IV taped up and in place, we drove to the oral surgeon.
By this time, I was really as pliable as biscuit dough. I was chatty and cracking jokes and trying to stay calm, which, thanks to big pharma, was getting easier and easier as the Lorazepam went to work. By the time I was in the operating room (which was, no foolin’, 60 degrees), I was up for whatever. I made a joke about moving all of the beef carcasses back into the room after the operation and they gave be a blanket.
At this point in the procedure, I was locked and loaded, right? I’m in the chair, there’s a couple of dental assistants in scrubs, the surgeon is here, and we’re good to go, right? They turn on the IV, and they give me that bite guard that holds the mouth open on my left side, where they would not be working. I didn’t count backwards. Didn’t do much of anything, really. I remember her looking in my mouth, and I think I recall when they put the little tarp down to keep pieces of tooth from raining debris into my throat. That was my last recollection.
And then the pain woke me up. I could feel the drill in my mouth. My first thought was, “oh shit, the anesthetic wore off!” I tried to say something, but I couldn’t move. I was being held down by several people.
“I’m not numb!” I said through the open mouth guard and the drill.
“You are numb,” the oral surgeon said. “It’s just pressure.”
“It’s not pressure! It’s pain!”
I’ve never felt anything so agonizing in my life. I was only dimly aware of the sounds coming out of me as she drilled. It was excruciating, like live current arcing through my head. I kept trying to get away from the drill, and they had to keep holding me still.
Janice came in; I heard her talking, and the oral surgeon’s reply: “He’s been numbed! I’ve got one tooth out, but I have to keep going. Can you hold his feet?”
Janice grabbed my ankles and started trying to talk to me. I can’t remember now what she was saying or what was happening at the time. But the other nurse, holding my head, got really close to my ear and began talking to me like I was a skittish horse. The extraction continued, while I cried and begged for her to stop. The oral surgeon eventually got my gum stitched up and left the room, presumably to cry herself. I was groggy and weak, but the excruciating pain had stopped.
That’s what I remember. Janice had a very different perspective.
I was put into a state of Twilight Sedation, which is not like being all the way unconscious. It makes you drowsy, calm, and in a kind of hypnotic state where you can talk and follow commands, but are otherwise out of it. While in this state, the oral surgeon gave me a shot of novocaine, and got the molar out, easy peasy.
The wisdom tooth, however, evidently had deep roots that may have been in contact with the other nerves in the jaw, like that long one they showed me in the surgery video. Even though I had been completely numbed to the gumline and below, the wisdom tooth was so deep in the jaw that all of the topical medicine they were giving me wasn’t doing shit.
Anyway, evidently, as soon as she started hammering on the bit of exposed wisdom tooth, using what felt like a gardening trowel, that circumvented the whole “twilight sleep” process and I tried to leave, with extreme prejudice. They tried calming me down, but nothing worked. One of the assistants ran out to get Janice, thinking maybe she could get through to me—still in a state of unconsciousness, but fighting for my life.
Janice walked into the operating room and I must have looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall, fighting against the attendants and screaming “You blew my cover!” I have absolutely no memory of this, by the way. My reptile brain kicked into fight or flight mode. There were five nurses trying to hold me down when Janice joined the fracas. All of them were bent to the task of keeping me in the chair so that the operation could continue.
Janice started talking to me and I started answering her. Her voice mellowed me out a bit, but every time the drilling would start up, I’d go back to thrashing, trying to get out of the chair. Janice eventually convinced them to let me get calm and wake up enough that I would be in control of my own limbs, and they gave me a break from the torture. Two of the nurses went to go prep for the next surgery and Janice kept talking to me until I woke up enough to know it was her. At that point, she was holding my feet, and the oral surgeon did her best to numb me up for what came next. It did not work.
I don’t know how she got it out of my head. For all I know, that was some vestigial twin that was giving me super powers. That’s the funny thing about going to the dentist; it hurts when you leave, but you can tell this is a temporary pain that will subside, rather than the constant pain you were previously in. As beat-up as I was (and still kinda am), I could tell the pain was gone.
After it was over, the oral surgeon told Janice that the only person who ever woke up in the middle of the operation before was suffering from PTSD. She asked Janice if I was in the military. It’s interesting to me because when I was a kid, I used to flip out like that over getting shots. Nearly exactly like that. I won’t go so far as to suggest that I have been traumatized by needles as a child and suffer from PTSD., but something about being in pain and being unable to move triggered something that was strong enough to reach around the expensive drugs I was on and wake me up.
My blood pressure was really high after all of that—no idea why, really—and they gave me fentanyl to chill me out, for crying out loud. Eventually I was breathing normally, and they’d removed the IV from my arm, and I said to Janice, “I’m pretty sure the nurses were trying to take advantage of me.” That’s when the nurse knew I was going to be all right. She fetched a wheelchair and loaded me into it for the ride out to the car.
By now I realized what I’d done and was embarrassed and ashamed. One of the assistants was pregnant, and I can’t imagine if I’d accidentally hurt her with my flailing. I apologized to the nurse and she said something that didn’t make sense to me at the time: “Oh, sweetie, we know that wasn’t you.”
As soon as the car door shut, I broke down and sobbed uncontrollably.
That was several days ago. The tooth ache is gone, but I’ve got a hundred other sore spots from God only knows what; some nurse’s shoe on my head as she tried to keep me in the chair, presumably. My neck is the thing that still twinges. They held me down for a while, it seems. Now we are in maintenance mode, getting me back onto solid foods. I’m worried about infection in the jaw, of course. I’m going to be okay, but right now, I feel like day-old chewing gum. I know this was one of those freak occurrences, I mean, who could have predicted that I was resistant to sedation?
Despite many reassurances, I still feel profoundly impacted by my ordeal. In particular, I have a real hot button when it comes to a loss of control, and six nurses holding me down so that someone could drill into my skull is the in-my-broken-head image of what a loss of control looks and feels like. Granted, I don’t know that there was any other way to get that giant squid (or, if you prefer, an Architoothis—I’ll see myself out) out of my head without cutting laterally into the mandible.
I’m trying to find a positive spin on it, and I just can’t. Suffice to say, if I’d have known what pain I was in for, I’d’ve tried something else first. Conversely, I don’t think my next trip to the dentist will produce such trauma and pain. It’s the not remembering that gets to me. I’m grateful for not being able to recall all of the procedure, but I’m also terrified of what I might have done in that waking/twilight state. It’s unsettling to contemplate.
Thanks everyone for the solidarity online; your tube sock ice packs were noted and appropriate credit has been given. I have a few more days of this before I get back to normal. Maybe a month. Maybe more.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: we don’t normally post reviews that are negative for the sake of interaction, but rather, to frame discussions. Your opinions of the animated series below may well differ. We welcome any salient points you wish to bring up, using the COMMENT button below.
Batman: Caped Crusader (Prime)
An all-star alumni of executive producers bring the latest incarnation of the venerable character to life in an animated series that was initially cut from Warner Brother’s schedule.
It’s a dead heat for which iconic super hero has gotten more do-overs, Elseworlds, reboots, and relaunches between Superman and Batman. I think Batman has it by a nose. I don’t know how many different versions of Batman I’ve seen, animated, or otherwise. The trick of it is this: there’s only so many iterations of the very basic, elemental origin story that you can tell. There’s no end to the trappings and the décor, of course. But these elements are so ingrained that it’s hard to not look at the pieces and parts of Batman’s story like Taco Bell ingredients.
I’ll show you what I mean. Here’s the menu:
Setting—classic, modern, or Neverwhen?
Cowl—short ears or long ears?
Costume—bright, somber, or sleek?
Timeline—Urban myth, Vigilante, or Friend of the GCPD?
Sidekick—Yes or No?
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Pick Neverwhen, long ears, somber, Urban Myth with a pinch of Vigilante, no sidekick, and viola! That’s our new Batman cartoon, with executive producers Bruce Timm, Ed Brubaker, Matt Reeves, and JJ Abrams, amongst others. An all-star line-up of former Batscribes lined up to write scripts, set in a world really similar to the original Batman: the Animated Series, and purposefully so. We pick up at the beginning of Batman’s career. Crime is still a problem, but the newly appointed Commissioner Gordon and gung-ho attorney Harvey Dent have plans to clean up the place. Dr. Harleen Quinzel is working at Arkham Asylum. The Penguin is a lounge act now, half Brieanne of Tarth and half Colin Farrell, and...it’s all just so uninteresting.
I’ve seen this timeline play out so many ways: with Robin and without. In movies, in cartoons, in print. I just don’t think a few redesigned villains—well-designed, but nevertheless—can hold my interest in watching Batman level up. New villains and reused names designed to give me the feels don’t work anymore. Not on Batman. There’s too much water under that bridge. So much so that all of those interesting changes on the menu to make a Crunch-Bat Supreme are the least of the formula these days. They are a given. Of course, you’re going to gender-flip Penguin. Of course you are. I’m much more interested in the story that you tell using the gender-flipped Penguin. All of the rest of that stuff is a distant second place.
The series looks pretty (I like the long, offset ears), and there are interesting pieces in scripts written by Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, et.al. There’s just not enough about Batman: Caped Crusader that’s either feels new or is interesting enough to hold my attention. I can only presume that this series was aimed at Generation Z in an effort to conscript new Batman fans. If this was my first Batman cartoon, I’d probably love it.
Damn you have gone through the wringer , all the best!
Life apparently imitates art: https://youtu.be/M68GeL8PafE?si=JbrwzhGjQqPOZxa3