Here I am the morning of surgery – April 30. Yikes.

I make sure to take a Xanax to get the relaxation juices flowing. I gather up my supplies – purple stress putty, fully-charged MP3 player, an old picture of me where I’m smiling BIG (motivation for going through this), and the second Xanax. I make sure to dress in comfortable clothing, because I’ll be horizontal for hours.

The procedure was every bit as long as promised – six fun-filled hours. Four of those hours were spent with the periodontist, two hours working on the top teeth and two hours working on the bottom teeth.

The Xanax I took before my appointment certainly helped to relax me, and it turns out that I was relaxed enough that I never took the second pill. Unfortunately, I was awake for the procedure; fortunately, lots of novocaine was administered. I suppose that’s a good thing if you have a fetish for getting oodles of shots with big needles in your mouth.

Unfortunately, my MP3 player acted up during the work on the top of my mouth. Even after I got it working, it did a piss poor job of drowning out all of the unpleasant noises. And there were many. I realized though that the music wouldn’t allow me to run away from the PHYSICAL activity that was occurring – the digging and the yanking and the cajoling of the teeth. I’d still recommend taking an MP3 player, though.

I ended up spending lots of time manipulating my purple stress putty. It came in handy.