Friday, December 4th 2009, was my last day on Franklin Templeton job and possibly my last working day this year. It was a nice and easy day with not too much pressure on my shoulder. I was looking forward to a 3-day Ntropic holiday party in Cabo. We were to leave on Sunday morning and come back Tuesday afternoon.
Later on that afternoon, I started feeling a little bit of pain in my tooth. No big deal, it would go away by Saturday, I thought. The pain progressed as it got later and later. I popped an Advil toward the end of the day, continued working and went home at a decent time.
By night time, the little pain had turned into bigger pain. I popped two Advils before I went to sleep, woke up the next late morning with the same intense and constant throbbing pain. More Advils were taken. I had been through a similar situation where Advil took care of me for a few days before I could get to a dentist. This time, for some reason, Advil didn’t seem to last.
We, then, started googling, yahooing and yelping for a Saturday dentist. That was how we found Dr. Terry. We got an appointment later that afternoon at 2:30. We were asked to come a little early to fill out some paper works. Ed had left to help a friend to mount a plasma screen and he was going to bring home some lunch takeouts before my appointment.
In the meantime, I started packing for our Cabo trip. Popped a couple more Advils in between. Ed got home with some dim sum from Koi’s Palace. Tempting, but I was in such pain that I was going to wait to eat after the dentist check me out. Plus we didn’t have that much time before we had to leave for my appointment.
Just a few minutes after Ed got all the dim sum lined up on the table, the doorbell rang. Refer to Ed’s blog for detail of this story.
So we got to Dr. Terry. She was a nice, friendly and gentle dentist. Got some xrays taken. She poked and explored around a bit. “You need a root canal” she said. She gave me some prescription to vicodine and antibiotics and sent me home. I was set! Advil and vicodine, what else would I need.
We went to eat dinner at Ed’s dad’s that night. Picked up my prescriptions on our way home. Finished up packing, cleaned all our lenses and camera sensors while consuming more and more Advils. I resisted the vicodine, since I planned to have a few drinks in Cabo for the next few days.
Finally, it was time for bed. Jesse was scheduled to pick us up between 8:00-8:15 to take us to the airport. We had to be checked in by 8:30 am to catch the 10:30 am flight. An hour went by, I could not sleep and the pain would not stop. In desperation, I decided to take the vicodine. Tried to sleep again. Unfortunately, it didn’t help.
It was now 3:00 am. I laid helplessly in bed, could not get any rest. All I could think about was if I were ever going to survive being in Cabo in this pain. I thought not. I woke Ed and told him I wasn’t going to make it like this. We could either get help in the morning and leave on a later flight or we could still try to leave as is and if anything, we could just go for the day.
Having so much faith in Yelp, Ed started yelping once again and called a few numbers, only two of which had real people talking on the other line at 3 in the morning. One of them was 1-800-DENTIST. They had listings of practicing Endodontist, but none was available until after the weekend. Monday was a maybe, but the operator would not know until then. The other was Dr. Livingood’s emergency answering service. We explained our situation to the operator and he was going to try to get a hold of this Dr. Livingood. He was now our only hope. Made me think of the scene in Starwars where Princess Leia sent a message through R2-D2’s holographic imaging. “Obiwan Kenobi, you’re our only hope”.
We checked to see if we could get on a later flight. Alaska Airlines could not make it harder for us, the flight we were going to be in was the last flight that day. Apparently, they only fly to San Jose Del Cabo twice a day. One at 8:30 am and another 10:30 am. Our options are narrowed down some more.
Came 4:30 am, Ed’s phone rang. Dr. Livingood himself had called us back. He said he could help and be ready by 8:00 am. Ed shamelessly but nicely asked to see if he would be able to do it earlier due to our flight. He needed an assistant for the procedure and said he would try to find one available and/or awake and would call us back.
After asking if he could help now, we didn’t think we’d ever hear back from him ever. Great! Now what? I guess we’ve tried all options, we could only wait and hope now. To our surprise, Dr. Livingood called back. He had found an assistant and he was going to help us. We were to meet him at his office at 5:30 am, he hoped to be done by 8:00 am, which would work out great. We rushed to get our luggages into the car, just in case we had to go straight to the airport, instead of having Jesse picked us up as planned.
This whole procedure was going to set us back $alot + $400 for the emergency fee. Dr. Livingood also mentioned that I might need more than just one visit. He wouldn’t know until later, but he promised to at least relief the pain. Fine! I was desperate and Mexico would be so awful in pain.
So, here we were at the Dr.’s office at 5:30 am. The office was going through some remodeling but we didn’t care as long as we could make our trip. I walked in to the room and there was an assistant of Dr. Livingood. “This is my wife, Julie” he said. My mind was made, we were going to go through with this even if Ed had to assist. Though, we found out later that she was a practicing general dentist. It would’ve been a funnier story if she wasn’t. We got started right away. There was no time to waste.
During the process, we stumbled upon a couple of problems. One was that one of the roots took a sharp turn and made it a little bit harder to work on. Another one was a bigger problem. Normally, there should be 3 canals in a molar, but the Dr. couldn’t find the third one in mine. Apparently, some time they are either really small or merged into one.
7:45 am, Dr. Livingood started wrapping up. He put some medicine into the tooth and patched it up temporarily. It was for sure that I would need to come back to find the third canal when we get back from Mexico.
It was time for us to take care the bill. Due to the construction that was going on in the office, they’ve unplugged the credit card machine and on top of that the Dr. Livingood didn’t know how to operate it. Luckily Ed had some retail experience and knew exactly how.
By 8:00, we were in the car ready to go home. We made it home early enough to do final checking to make sure we had everything we needed for Mexico. Ed even had some time to take care of some business. J
Jesse arrived at 8:15 to pick us up then off we went to the airport.
And so that was my longest Saturday…