I don’t know if it’s an impacted wisdom tooth or a cavity, but I was literally screaming and writhing in pain early this morning.  For all intents and purposes of metaphor, it was like I was being gang-raped by homosexual tooth gnomes.  Gay tooth gnomes: had they been lesbian tooth gnomes, the pain would not have been that terrible (it would have been enjoyable, even).

   I’m not saying that homosexual tooth gnomes exist.  But coupled with a 15-degree Celsius temperature low, you can only imagine the pain of it.  The pain was enough for me to start screaming like a pussy, like I’m being torn a new anus on my molar.  And this was at around 4:00 AM.

   At the verge of tears, I woke up to try brushing the pain out of my teeth, which didn’t work.  Then I took Tramadol - emergency room analgesic - which didn’t work.  I opened a bottle of Vodka Cruiser hanging around at the refrigerator, hoping that the mild alcohol would numb my teeth, or at least calm me enough to get some much-needed sleep.  That didn’t work.

   My mom woke up just in time to help me with my woes: she opened up one of them lidocaine patches and had me plaster it on my cheek.  Then, in a strange twist, she actually gave me gin.

   That, believe it or not, worked.

   No, I’m not in great shape.  I’ve been meaning to get the few extra pounds of flab out of my midsection for quite a while now, but I can’t do abdominal crunches because of the throbbing pain in my lower back.  As such, I didn’t make a New Year’s Resolution to exercise.

   But being a prolific blogger (which means that I write almost every day), I must say that blogging takes its toll on wrists and finger joints.  Many people suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), particularly secretaries and office workers.  “Nintendinitis,” or a form of joint pain caused by excessive gaming, is rising as one of the chronic maladies of today.  After three years of blogging and almost 22 years of being surrounded by computers, I’m well-acquainted with the joint pain that results from computer use.

   People claim that the structure of the keyboard is the cause of all computer-related orthopedic maladies.  Some people have resorted to “natural keyboards,” where the keyboard can be split in the middle and adjusted to a more natural position.  If that doesn’t work, keyboards laid out in Dvorak (as opposed to QWERTY) also prove to be alternatives.  If blaming the keyboard wasn’t enough, there’s also the mouse.  Contoured mice have been around for quite a while, and mouse pads with wrist-rests have also been marketed.

   I find that the best remedy for computer-related joint pain is exercise.  Whenever I play games or write, I always do a little move from jiu-jitsu, in that I loosen up my wrists by rotating them in 270 degrees.  Loosening up your wrists allows for more freedom of movement: because I don’t use both hands in typing, my right hand does most of the work.  As such, I need the freedom of movement for my right hand to “fly” the keyboard.

   Loosening your wrists also helps in gaming, particularly with arcade machines.  A bad wrist will prevent you from doing complicated motions, particularly in fighting games like Tekken (like wavedashing) and Street Fighter (the Dragon Punch motion).  Console controllers aren’t joint-friendly, and a comfortably loose wrist would allow you to contend with shoulder buttons.  Also, a loose wrist would delay (for a while) the pain that comes with turning vibrations on in a PlayStation Dual-Shock controller.

   There are a lot of benefits to loose wrists for sports like golf and masturbation, but in the end, there really is no substitute for consulting a doctor if you have joint pain.

   It’s no secret that I have no love lost for the medical profession in general: I don’t like psychiatrists, pediatricians, gastroenterologists, opthalmologists.  Or that orthopedic doctor who thought that the best cure for my scoliosis outside of strapping me to a back brace was to lock me up in a painful submission hold that was supposed to be “physical therapy.”  But if there’s any kind of doctor that wouldn’t receive Christmas cards from me this Holiday season, it’s a dentist.

   I suppose my dad wouldn’t give Christmas cards to his proctologist, either, but I spent more than my own fair share of time on a dentist’s chair.  Having had braces for the better part of six years meant that my dentist knew more about the sorry state of my teeth better than anyone else in the world, including me.

   Because I had braces, my teeth required cleaning every appointment for the stuff a toothbrush wouldn’t clean.  “Oral prophylaxis” is a fancy term for the dentist hovering above you picking away at your teeth with something off the toolbox of a serial killer.  The saliva-sucking tube dries up your mouth and leaves you with the sour aftertaste of days-old sinigang.  As you rinse and spit, you literally brace for the Hell that comes with adjusting the wires in your braces, and applying elastic bands that feel like your face is being ripped sideways by Hulk Hogan.  Or that a new asshole is being torn right smack at your nose.

   As much as I express my dislike for my dentist, he doesn’t fall short on expressing his dislike for me either.  I come in late for appointments, and I don’t heed his advice on drinking Coke.  So you can figure out what I felt when they finally took the heathen metal off my teeth: freedom, sweet freedom.

   Biperiden is an interesting drug.  So is Haloperidol.  Like many interesting drugs that are supposed to make my life better, I’m going to ditch them for now and go Rambo.

   Having slowly returned to a comparatively mild relapse for a comparatively mild mental disorder, I need prescribed drugs now.  So far, the idea of mind-over-matter didn’t work for me.  Biperiden gives you lockjaw, and Haloperidol gives you the jitters that you can’t hide.  If you’re really intent on concealing shivering from Haloperidol, you might as well do the Macarena while having the Parkinson’s-like side-effect: there’s just no way you can hide it.

   I’ve had a history with prescribed drugs that affect your nervous system: they used to give me Midrid to control the ill-effects of migraine before I was diagnosed with the disorder.  After a three-week regimen, it effectively became my sleeping pill.  Midrid knocks you out like nobody’s business: I bet even Manny Pacquiao’s left hook can beat it.  Then came the tranquilizers.

   If you’re like me, you’re a medical guinea pig, especially when doctors tell you how much you need the tranquilizers.  I looked at the medical guides, and it seemed that the drugs they gave me over the past two years are the stuff you would shoot an elephant with.  I started off with Amisulpride, then to Chlorpromazine, then to the first witches’ brew of Haloperidol and Clozapine, then to Risperdal, then to the second witches’ brew of Haloperidol and Chlorpromazine, then to Clozapine, then back to Haloperidol.

   Risperdal, while obscenely expensive, tastes strangely like toothpaste and the melt-in-the-mouth thing was addictive.  But as much as I hate to admit it, Haloperidol is supposed to be my new best friend.

   I’m not a doctor or a nurse: I don’t know what “adverse reactions” are.  Little did I know that the pill I was taking to “counter the side-effects” of another medication I’m taking was a drug usually prescribed to counter Parkinson’s Disease.  I’m OK now, but for the better part of six hours last night, I was literally caught with my mouth open.

    Surely there’s nothing to be worried about with adverse reactions… if you’re not in the receiving end of them.  Not only did my jaw tense up, but also my tongue, and I was producing rather copious amounts of saliva.  I had to cut the visit to my uncle short because of it.  This is not the first time I have proven to have a mild aversion towards a drug: I sometimes itch from a particular brand of cough syrup, and I don’t take too kindly to antidepressants.  But ever since I’ve been taking CNS-affecting drugs - with a prescription - I have always been privy to their side-effects.  Well, you know what they say about the free lunch.

   Of course, there’s a certain humor in having a mild lockjaw: I was trying to trace the exact source of that episode: I got a bit paranoid with yesterday’s dinner of shrimp, that I may have caught the red tide or something.  Maybe I got tetanus from that rusty nail I accidentally brushed my left hand into the other day.  Or maybe it’s just a psychosomatic thing.

   Yea, verily: ignorance of the MIMS manual is no excuse.