Afterscare.

 Posted on Facebook that I'd had seven teeth removed. Why? Why do I post anything on Facebook ever? Is it because I never go out and therefore never see anybody? And now these are my conversations, this is my social interaction - "Hello! I'm still here. I'm still bright and funny. I still have opinions."

I mean I hate it, probably because I never see anybody and I'm no longer used to other people. When I post something innocuous like "I'm watching - insert name of TV program or film - and I really like it" I'm just expressing an opinion. It doesn't require a rebuttal. 

But that's what you get, every time, and always the first reply: "Hello, I like a thing." "No, the thing you like is shit." "Okay. Do you want me to tell you I'm wrong? Is that it? That another, cleverer man made me see the error of my ways in a concise manner? I thought I liked something but I must have been wrong, because he didn't. Sorry."

Worse still, there are people saying "I thought I hated it but, based on your assessment, I will watch the rest of the series." NO! please don't. Trust your instincts. Not everything is for everyone. You might hate it. To quote Spandau Ballet, once again, "I don't need this pressure on."

Another dislike - so many - is, when posting a song I like, someone immediately posts another song and says "Have you heard this song though?" the implication being they've now trumped my song with a better one. Maybe I'm being paranoid. I'm sure that does happen with shut-ins, spooked by the peculiar motivations of alien minds - what do they really mean by "have you heard this?" Of course I've heard it. I've heard everything I could ever want to hear. How dare you open up exciting new vistas for me. I am a lone traveler kayaking up my own narrow fundament, listening to the same ten albums on strict rotation. I have rendered all music a thick, gelatinous reduction and now I'm spooning it into my ears. Thank you, no. 

(Only today, I discovered I really like "Cleaners From Venus" from a friends mix-CD, and I'm listening to my copy of Mellow's "Perfect Colors" which I've owned for three years and never listened to. Both are delightful.)

So I'm mad and freakish and institutionalised and usually wrong. That much has been established. But I'm not wrong about this: if I post that I've had seven teeth removed in a single sitting, what I'm looking for is sympathy and good wishes. And, half the time, that's what I got. Not everyone is evil. 

But what I also got was also dire warning that I was definitely going to get the innocuous sounding "dry socket", and that the subsequent pain was "the most excruciating pain" ever experienced. This is the day after the surgery, not the day before when I could have talked to the dentist about it. No, this is my recovery time when there's nothing I can do about it but take the feeble precautions the dentist has advised me to take: rinse with salt water, don't drink hot beverages, be careful about what you eat. That's it. Job's comforters aren't in it. 

A dry socket occurs when the scab over the wound falls away and the ragged hole in your gum becomes infected. I told my correspondents that I was gurgling away with salt water. "That won't save you - I rinsed like billy o. Still got it. Agony. Worse than childbirth." Wow! That's quite painful. So, there was no escaping it. It was a done deal. An added feature of tooth extraction was searing, inevitable pain and the dentist hadn't even mentioned it!

I looked it up. It affects between 2 and 5% of people who have teeth removed. It's more prevalent in smokers and women on the pill. It's most likely to happen in the first 48 hours. 

It's four days after the surgery. The gums are tender in the morning but I'm comfortably managing the pain with paracetamol. I'm no longer spitting blood. I'm eating soup and brushing the remaining teeth with a baby's toothbrush that Susan bought me. I'm not out of the woods yet - it can still happen up to a week later. But I'm being cautious. And I'm not yet in agony. 

Sorry to disappoint you, you fucking ghouls.*

* I really hope this doesn't age badly.