Had a bit of discomfort in me gob Tuesday, woke up Wednesday and the lower right quarter of me heed was swollen up like a melon. I thought "that ain't right", but trudged into work thinking it would sort itself out. Said hi to everyone - turns out nobody looks at me, so nobody noticed. Brill. First on the agenda was the weekly criticise newsted meeting, where people lay into me for no good reason. Never been a fan of those, somehow, and I could feel the swelling swelling, so I mentioned it and said I needed to get it sorted. For the first time, they looked at me. "Kinell, yeah, get yourself away. AFTER THIS." So I had to sit there getting pelters for 45 minutes while my head kept ballooning, then send someone an email so they might not whine. Then I f***ed off home.
Phoned my GP. Of course no slots, the doc will ring later. None of this is verbatim, it's my translation. Doc phones two and a half hours later with a "f*** do you want?" attitude. Explained the symptoms and she was "OK, come in three and a half hours, I'll have a look." Cool, I'll look like the f***ing Elephant Man by then.
Wandered into the doc and her initial reaction was "Holy cocksucking Christ, you've been like that all day? f*** me, you're an emergency. I need to make a call to my mate at Maxillofacial surgery at the RVI. s***." (my translation
) During her call I learned the term 'trismus'. f***ing merry trismus to me.
Build in several hours waiting between any events from here. Saw a doc at their catchily named MaxFax facility, who said "yeah, we're gonna knock you out and slit your throat". My reaction was "those things will not happen". Doc said that the chances of death under general anaesthetic are vanishingly small and you can die from an abscess anyway, so throw the dice. Jesus, grim. I bargained. Local anaesthetic, drain the abscess, reassess. They did it, bless them, midnight drainage.
The lady doc who did it said I would let them do anything to me as long as I was conscious. She got it.
Next day at lunchtime (not for me, I was f***ing nil by mouth throughout) she came back and said she didn't like my L7 and wanted to wrench it out. Fair enough, go for it. She did and the assisting nurse said "have you seen this before? The roots have grown twisted." And that's how I got an abscess. After fuckety odd years it twisted enough to leave a gap for germs to grow overfuckingnight.
That sorted the infection, but I still have a lump under my chin on that side, a self-defence mechanism, apparently, which might take weeks to go away. Like I need to be more jowly.
Apart from the eagerness to slit my f***ing throat, not feeding me or letting me sleep (IV antibiotics from 6am) and basically being imprisoned for 3 days what I found most disturbing was a lovely lady doctor (from the EU, so soon to be deported
) saying that as I had "admitted" drinking alcohol she had prescribed sedatives to replace it. That's not how it works, you can't prescribe mates and a laugh.
Anyway, yesterday a boxtick of doctors turned up and said there was no point detaining me any further. Seriously five and a half hours later I was allowed to leave.
Got home and told wifie and she was "
This really is your first time. Waiting for your pills, was it?
"
