3:04 AM - Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005
A Day Off -- And A Mystery Partially Solved
Today was a day off, which always comes with a sense of relief and dread. Relief that I don't have to spend the night in the sim, and dread that I have the entire day to study. I'm really getting sick of this darned Canadair Regional Jet....

Strangely, the ache in my teeth has spread to my entire lower jaw. Yesterday I was conscious about how tense my jaw was and I took an Ambien before falling asleep to relax any tooth-grinding that might happen while I was unaware. But when I woke up, the ache was worse. It’s been getting steadily worse all week. I’ve been visualizing calm, serene scenes before I fall asleep, and have been consciously relaxing my jaw and face muscles for days. Still, it’s worse. Nothing seems to help ease the pain; not Tylenol, not Ibuprofin, not Orajel.

So, tonight I decided that either something really bad is happening and maybe I have dreaded disease, or it really is uncontrolled stress manifestation. And then I was looking closely at my jaw and teeth and gums in the mirror tonight when I discovered a tiny little hole in my gum! It’s like a little bug was there with a jackhammer, drilling away an egg-shaped hole in the bottom of the gum where my lower lip connects to my jaw. I’m pretty sure it’s the source of my distracting pain, but I have no idea what it is or how it got there. It’s not a canker sore, and it isn’t a localized pain. It’s like something nasty got into my jawbone and is drilling away incessantly. And I’m convinced it entered through that weird little hole…. Maybe now that I know the source (if not the cause), those frightening tooth-loss dreams will stop?

The Hole Discovery was about the only meaningful thing that occurred today on my day off. I studied for awhile, of course, but not much. I had decided to get up early and get some exercise and sunlight (indeed I’m becoming pasty and white), but that plan fell through when I slept until after 4pm and took forever to get organized. So then I thought I’d go to a movie, but I didn’t want to deal with rush hour traffic. So I then figured that I’d help pass my long late night by seeing the 11pm movie. But this part of Atlanta is rough and all I need is to get mugged or worse – I’d have fried all these brain cells for nothing. So, here I sit, still in the hotel room, at 0300. With a severely aching jaw. And a bad case of cabin fever….