My physical misery should end tomorrow with the damn cracked wisdom tooth pulled out. I’ve had it done before. The oral surgeon shoots me up with Novocain, grabs a pair of plyers, straddles my chests, grips the tooth, and wiggles it out of my mouth. It makes squeaky sounds like a nail coming out of a wet piece of wood. Doesn’t hurt a bit. Feels weird. Happens fast. And the recovery is quick.

Since finding out more than a week ago my face has gone through a bit of hell. Mostly I haven’t had much pain but there were two days when the pain has been so hellish I that the prescription Motrin didn’t help. I was stuck in a Cronenberg movie. My face was sensitive. My right ear hurt. My tongue broke out in bumps. I felt like pulling all my teeth out. Saliva built up, making me spit constantly. One night I barely slept and suffered dirty looks from the cats. At 42 I’m not made for all nighters. Not like in my late teens and early 20s when I used to work in film.

So yeah. Tomorrow should be grand. Drug me up and climb on me dirty old man and yank that shit out. After this I should only have two wisdom teeth left. Both still have fillings and are holding strong. But one day…

And through the pain I continued on through my editing and revising of Hacker’s Moon (Miki Radicci 11). If on schedule I should be done this Tuesday and send it off to a beta reader/editor friend who let me know in a few months.

The rest of the week I can spend revising two short stories for two markets that wanted me to resubmit revisions. Hopefully I can meet their expectations for the scratch. They weren’t unreasonable so I believe I can.

With deepest sympathies,