Hitting a nerve…

As I irritably slam my fingers into the keyboard this morning, I do so in spite of the two fizzy cocodamol and the same number of paracetamol that flow lamely through my veins.

Perhaps, I now realise, I shouldn’t have opted for the cheapest brands of both medicines available in the pharmacy.

Tight-arse gets what tight-arse pays for, I suppose.

Unfortunately, a nascent toothache is beginning to gnaw at me.

It’s still in the early stages, but I am afraid it is going to get worse in the days to come – which, if their reputation for exacting excruciating oral pain on their victims is to be believed, is a process of decline that I deeply hope does not come to pass.

At the moment, I’d describe the discomfort as mild to moderate, hence my recourse to relatively weak painkillers.

But already it is harming my general happiness in such a way that makes me wonder what, if any, stronger drugs might be available to me if the ache becomes an agonising one. Will I have to try to procure some poitin?

Am I going to have to visit a witch in the woods? As it stands, who knows.

When my mouth sits restful and inert, the tooth is grand.

When I eat, it’s annoying.

When I drink tea, coffee, or, I’m guessing, any other hot liquid, it’s sore.

And when I suck air through my bottom row, it’s about an eight out of ten – with ten being a hot needle through the ear canal.

“So stay away from the tay, ask your mammy to mash your spuds for ye, and don’t intentionally pull cold air through the affected area of your gormless gob,” I hear you implore.

Well, while I appreciate your unvarnished commonsensical advice, even in spite of the gratuitously mocking manner in which it was delivered, things just aren’t that straightforward.

See, my fondness for solid foods and dependency on hot caffeinated drinks is only part of the problem. Neither help, but the thing that is really triggering and perpetuating the vast majority of my tooth-related pain is me. As in, myself. Or, I should say, some rogue, masochistic part of myself.

All morning, it has taken the whole of my concentration to stop myself from burying my tongue into the back of the sore tooth.

Why? I have no idea.

But anything less than a total monopoly on all of my mental strength, and some rogue region of my brain, like a Jihadist in the cockpit, seizes control of my tongue and drives it headfirst into the afflicted incisor.

Then, if I don’t intervene immediately, my face contorts, forcing my bottom lip downwards, thereby exposing the gnashers embedded in my lower mandible, and I’ll involuntarily suck in air as if I were trying to suffocate everybody in the room.

And that’s really painful.

So, aye, it seems that some part of me is unsatisfied with the amount of strife the toothache is occasioning and is willing to do whatever it takes to turn this minor dental incident into some kind of grandiose medical event.

I am not sure what seditious forces lurk within me or what it is they hope to achieve by this internal insurrection; but what I do know is that two lessons have been learned in the course of this toothache.

One: I was wrong to assume that everybody who ever got poetic about the unbearable pain of their sore tooth was nothing more than a melodramatic liar. I apologise. They are sore and I dread this one might soon be a killer.

And two, just splash out an extra 50 pence and get the better painkillers. Even if they don’t work, at least your evil brain won’t be able to blame the entire episode on your miserly ways.