All right, all right campers! You have been clamoring for weeks now for me to update my blog, and I am happy to report that I am FINALLY able to satisfy your craving for a Shawn Story. Old Man Winter may have arrived last week in the form of three inches of the white stuff, but I’m all warm inside knowing there are millions of teeming fans endlessly clicking “refresh,” eagerly anticipating a new entry. So without further ado…

As you all know, I had the pleasure of having some wisdom teeth extracted a couple of weeks ago. Millions before me have had their wisdom teeth removed, and I’m sure by dental standards mine went as routinely as can be expected, but this wouldn’t be a Shawn Story if there weren’t some snafus.

On the eve of the surgery I hit the grocery store to stock up on supplies. I don’t know what’s available in other locales, but New York has a very limited variety of these commodities, so I pretty much had vanilla, chocolate or strawberry something. Despite my refined tastes, I also picked up some powdered mashed potatoes. My momma raised me right and I am happy to say that until this point in my life I have never had the pleasure of powdered mashed potatoes, but I am here to tell you that Betty Crocker saved my life. They were filling, warm and comforting and I highly recommend them to anyone who wants something soft and mushy in their mouth.

As it’s not such a great idea to traverse the streets of New York in an anesthesia induced haze on one’s own, my friend John graciously offered to see me to and from the surgeon’s office on the day of the surgery. We arrived at 12 noon on the dot, and surprisingly I was ushered in shortly thereafter. As I settled into the chair, Dr. K came in, grabbed my chart and said, “So what are we doing today?”

I was a little surprised that I had to tell HIM why I was there, but once his memory was refreshed, he was raring to go. Careful readers will recall that I was to have the top, left and right wisdom teeth removed, as well as an examination of the #2 molar on the right hand side. While Dr. K went through the list of all the calamities that were about to take place in my mouth, the Science Experiment of an assistant was laying out his barbarous implements of destruction. She then declared that I shouldn’t worry, everything was going to be fine. Well, if you can’t trust chubby Science Experiment, who can you trust?

Dr. K slid the IV expertly into my “extraordinary vein” (why, thank you Dr.) and said that in a few minutes I would feel very relaxed. The last thing I remember before crashing is wondering how much of the mixture running through my blood was made of the ketamine sitting on the counter, and then I was gone.

When I woke up, Dr. K was telling me that everything went very well and Science Experiment was cleaning up the now bloodied tray of instruments. I couldn’t really feel much except for an odd pressure in the back of my mouth. Science Experiment informed that this was perfectly normal, and I really wasn’t in much of a position to argue so I went with it.

As luck would have it, Science Experiment and I happen to live in the same neighborhood, and she decided now would be a great time to rub her bouncy belly and tell me how the noise of our neighbors’ Harleys made her feel “all wet inside.” Well, yuck. I smiled meekly as she helped me out of the chair and took me to the “recovery area.” The “recovery area” is a room about the size of a smallish bathroom, with no door but a bed built into the wall, and is conveniently placed in front of a window that looks into the lobby. Thus, when one is recovering from whatever atrocities have been done in the torture chambers nearby, all the anxious patients waiting outside can see you. I don’t think this is very good planning, but what do I know. As Science Experiment led me to the bed, my knee slammed right into the corner of it with a resounding “crack” and Science Experiment laughed and said “Everybody DOES that,” as if the thought of warning people never actually occurred to her.

I chilled out for a bit, and then was brought to the nearby reception area, where John joined me. The receptionist assigned to the task of talking me through the post-op protocols was a bespectacled, smarmy woman who had a habit of treating every object she touched as if it were made of the most fragile china.

She placed two small envelopes of gauze in front of me and told me when to change them and how, what to eat and when, and when to put ice on my face. I gave her the phone number for the pharmacy by my house and asked if she could call in the prescription for pain medicine so I wouldn’t have to wait, and she obligingly passed it off to a nurse, who made the call. She then reached into her printer, pulled out a piece of paper, gingerly brought it to me and placed it so delicately in front of me you would have thought it was the Magna Carta itself. She pushed her glasses down to the base of her nose and stared at me like I was her son and she had just caught me picking my nose.

I find it incredibly rude to present a bill to someone just as they’re coming out from under anesthesia, but maybe I’m naïve that way. Regardless, that’s what she had done, and after a few quiet seconds, I said something like “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“How do you want to take care of this today?”

Resigned to the fact that I would have to deal with this in a bit of a stupor, I took the bill and read through it. Of course the requisite sticker shock ensued, but upon careful review it became clear to me that something was amiss.

My more devoted readers will recall that my dentist had agreed to pay a portion of the bill because all of this was his fault. However, there was no mention of any adjustment on the actual bill. I mentioned as intelligibly as possible to the receptionist that there was supposed to be a portion of the bill taken care of. You would have thought I said “There is feces on your chin.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” she curtly replied.

“Dr. F was supposed to talk to Dr. K about it,” I mumbled.

“Again, I don’t know anything about that. I’ll have to ask Dr. K.” And with that, she popped out of her chair and bounced happily to the back of the office. Clearly this was a woman who loved sharing bad news, but then who better to work in a dental surgeon’s office? Even in my drug haze I realized that this was not going to end the way I wanted it to unless I took matters into my own hands. I asked John to pass me my cell phone and I called Dr. F.

Dr F., conveniently, was not in. Dr. K came out of whatever procedure he was in the middle of to inform me that Dr. F had in fact never even contacted him about my case, which was mildly surprising to me given that he was examining the #2 molar at the recommendation of Dr. F. I knew if I paid the bill in full I would never see my money again, so after some hemming and hawing on Dr. K’s part, and some quick thinking on my part, he agreed to take a copy of my credit card and let me sort it all out later.

It was at this moment that the nurse phoning in my prescription came out from around the other side of the desk and said in the most exacerbated voice I’ve ever heard, “Well I ain’t never heard THAT before.”

Receptionist popped up like a prairie dog from around the corner and said, “What?” Man, she really got off on bad news.

“The pharmacist said I can’t phone in the scrip. He say I got to give it to the patient and he got to bring it in to be filled.”Shocked, but clearly elated, Receptionist bellowed a hearty “What!?” and I put my head on my desk and sighed. Say it with me readers; this would not have happened in Chelsea.

“He said I can’t fill it over the phone and he hung up on me!””I can’t believe it!” Receptionist said with glee.

Dr K., upon hearing all of this, decided THIS was something he could ball up and be a man about, and said “Give me the number.” He called in the scrip, and then told me I should never go to that pharmacy again. I thanked Sherlock for his opinion, and John and I left.

John expertly hailed a cab, and off we went to Queens. It was upon arriving at the pharmacy that the Novocain began to wear off. As we trudged toward the back, prescriptions in hand (just in case), it became immediately clear to me that the five people in line before me weren’t getting their meds anytime soon, and thus I probably wouldn’t either. I was prepared to have a hissy, but held off.

Surprise of all surprises, Rashid the Pharmacist had not filled my prescription, despite Dr. K calling it in. So I dropped it off and mentally decided that Rashid had 20 minutes to get this done before I went postal and began throwing bloody wads of gauze at his turban. I’m not sure if it was 20 minutes or not, but when I hit the end of my rope and my pain threshold, I got back in line. Luckily Rashid had just put my precious pills in a bottle and called my name. John got me home, and I promptly entered into a Vicodin induced Jimmy Hendrix Experience. That’s some fun stuff.

Well readers, that’s it for today. I’ve been told that my blog, not unlike so many other things in my life, is too long so I’m going to wrap it up here. In my next installment, coming soon (I promise), you’ll learn more about me than you ever wanted to know and how my recovery was made even more difficult by a little friend that visits during the most inconvenient times. Until then, be well. And send Ricky Martin an email thanking him for giving George Bush the finger. Oooh, that’s livin la vida loca baby.