#redhead stuff

The front-line hilarity is this: my father is a dentist, and my mother is a pharmacist.  Dad noticed from early on that it took not only twice as much Novocaine to shoot me up as it did with most of his patients, but also that he had to use a reasonable amount of Lidocaine in combination and administer them in an alternating sequence of shots over about an hour to an hour and a half to get me numb.  Every time I’d go to a dentist in the years from college onward who wasn’t my father, I’d have to explain that it would take a lot to numb me.  Unfortunately, they’d almost never listen, and after using far less Novocaine than I told them they’d have to use (and no Lidocaine at all), they’d hit me with the drill and I’d jump a foot.  I think in the end they’re always more scared than I am, and the requisite shooting-up continues exactly how I told them it needs to.  This happened most recently with a dentist I’ve been seeing for two years now, so you think he’d have learned his lesson.  He tried twice to get me numb and failed; by the time he had me jump out of the chair twice, his hands were literally shaking by the time he had me numb enough to work on.

Likewise, Mom noticed that it always seemed to take more Tylenol than it should to get rid of my teething aches and similar; in my childhood and pre-teen years, I was always notorious with the school nurse for needing loads of it (or ibuprofen, but I hated being offered that stuff because it did even less than high doses of acetaminophen did) just to get rid of garden-variety headaches, which I had often (and, by college, was suffering migraines).  The only over-the-counter painkiller that does much for me is Aleve (or, rather, I should say: one of the only non-narcotic painkillers that does anything for me is naproxen, but, even then, I’m taking 1.5 - 2x the usual dose just to get results).

Same goes for general anesthesia: I’ve had surgery four times now where it was required, and both of the early times (2008 and 2012) entailed slight fuck-ups.  The 2009 team started it running and I still wasn’t out when they hit the count of ten, so they had to amp it up; the 2012 anesthesiologists really messed up because they had me on the table and just assumed I was out but wasn’t quite yet, and I heard one of them say “Her eyes are still open” and another one of them say “Why isn’t she asleep?”  I found this hilarious, even as hazy as I felt at that point, and said, “I can hear you!”  They got the anesthesiologist back in there pretty fast.  The two times I’ve had surgery since then (both last year), I’ve told the anesthesiologists that I need higher dosage, and they’ve listened.