Maybe I should try Joan Crawford's dentist.

Good afternoon!

I've just finished watching the first season of "Feud: Bette and Joan" on FX.  (I'm a little "meh" about the reported second season subjects, but let's focus.)  For those of you not familiar, this series followed the feud between film greats Bette Davis and Joan Crawford that existed for years, but came to a head during the filming of "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?"  (One of my very favorite classic films.)

Thanks to TCM  I've been able to see several of these ladies' work and yes, they were good on their own, but there's something special about "Baby Jane" and I'm pretty sure, now having seen the series, that it was the hate and the frustration that oozed out of them during filming.

Hollywood has never been kind to actresses of any age, especially those past 35, but what the industry did to these two talents was horrible.  Turns out, maybe they didn't hate each other all that much, maybe, just maybe the heated feud was fueled by the manipulation of the male dominated industry.

Whatever.  None of that is really important to my rant today.

Over a week ago I had a molar pulled.  It was one that had been shabbily crowned by a dentist who was just this short of a sadist.  (Last name was Hussein...I kid you not.)  the crown fell off several times and finally my current dentist said he could no longer reattach it. I could pay for another crown ($800) or I could have it pulled ($180) or I could do nothing. ($0)  I did nothing for about five years.  Then, if you recall an earlier blog this month, a chunk of said tooth feel out while I was eating, prompting me to go and get the thing pulled once and for all.

That was last week Monday.  Dentist assured me the residual pain would be limited, controlled by Advil. He wrote a prescription for hydrocodone just in case.  

I inhaled way too much Advil the first two days...filled the prescription...used just about all the pills in that...and it was only Friday.

So here we are, Tuesday.  I'm taking my body weight in Advil at this point.  My stomach, never a friend of swallowed pills, is revolting.  (nothing says "good morning" quite like barfing up chocolate ice cream, six advil, and the stomach acid pill you have to take every morning.)

I called the dentist yesterday and his aid told me that in most people the pain goes away in a week but in a few special cases it can last up to 14 or 15 days.  Oh, and taking mass quantities of Advil is FINE as long as we don't go beyond 21 days on that.

Well.  There you have it. I'm special.

And I'm really SOL if this goes beyond 21 days.

So last night I was catching up on some DVR stuff and I watched the final episode of Feud where Joan Crawford in her later years starts spitting blood when she brushes her teeth. She goes to her dentist who marvels at the fact that she's missing something like six molars.  (I'm missing one)  She tells him it was the style back in the 20's to yank the molars.  Without teeth back there, your cheeks sank in and you had great cheekbones.  (And yes, she had great cheekbones.)  She was told to get cheek implants to make herself more attractive on screen, but since she couldn't afford that, she did the tooth yanking thing.

What she didn't say was how long the pain lasted after the yanking.

One down, five to go to get this look.

So I'm thinking, hey, she got like six molars pulled and she didn't gripe about the pain, so maybe there wasn't much AND she got great cheekbones.  I had one pulled, I've got face and stomach pains for days, and no, nothing has happened to my cheeks except my left one is a little swollen.

I could get on board with better cheekbones, you know, to balance out my double chin.

I wonder if Joan Crawford's dentist is still around...