hour

one moment i'm lying in a reclined dentist's chair in the middle of a medium-sized room, covered with a blanket, surrounded by staff/nurses. the surgeon himself is inserting the iv in my right cubital fossa but i hardly notice because i'm telling these women about how we keep our cats feeling safe from our dogs (hey - they asked!). (we use baby gates - we have 3 of them in use.)

and the very next moment i'm in a different medium-sized room, in a different chair, not reclined, asking a woman (maybe someone from the previous room, but i'm not sure), the only other person in the room, if i can have the fragments of my teeth. it's hard for me to make myself understood because my mouth is full of gauze. she tells me, not unkindly, that this is the 3rd time i've asked this question and no, i can't have them; they've been disposed of.

then i see kara and am helped up out of the chair. with assistance i walk to the car. on the drive home i giggle about the lost time and the goofiness of the whole situation. where did my mind go during that hour? for it was about an hour that i lost. i wish i could get a recording of that, where it went, what i experienced, somehow.

percocet makes me a little nauseated (i have yet to eat anything this morning) and seems to give me some chills. but right now i don't have any pain. i can feel the sutures in my mouth. and i had gauze pads in my mouth all day yesterday as tamponades, but by the evening the bleeding had stopped for the most part. no swelling as of yet, and no bruises.