When it rains, it dumps

So here I am at an Irish pub in Strasbourg with two peepe from Galway watching a rugby match, and I'm talking about my wisdom teeth. I say how great it is to have more molars with which to chew things.

"But they're wasted on you," the Irish kid says, "you're a vegetarian. You're not even going to rip meat apart with them or anything."

He has a point. We talk, laugh, drink; conversation over. I wake up the next morning with a throbbing ceek, a burgeoning pain that increases internally and begins to manifest itself externally (read: chipmunk cheek). My Couchhost is kind, tries to help me whiskey-drink my way out of it, to no avail. I spend the night not sleeping and thinking about how much energy it takes to be in pain.

I went this morning to a dentist, presented myself abruptly, told her I was going to Paris the next day at 7am, and wanted her to rip my wisdom tooth out, there and then. It was the only option, in my head; I'd re-configured my whole trip on the TGV under the assumption that I'd be woozy and in extreme pain, lugging my huge backpack around and slurring my speech, plastic bags trailing out of my pockets that I'd have ready for impromptu vomiting.

But no. La dentiste laughs at me, and tells me that I have an infection in my gum that snuck in through the little cracks in between my dent de sagesse and my gum while the tooth was busy growing in. She can't possibly take my tooth out because I can barely open my mouth (I'm here spoon-feeding myself eggs with the facility of a baby bird... woops, cannibalistic analogy), and if she took a knife to my gums, it would only spread the infection deeper, leading to a swollen, infected mouth.

She promptly writes me five prescriptions (an antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory, two painkillers and an antiseptic mouthwash) and charges me 21 euro. Don't worry, though, she says; here's a form that you can fill out and send to the MGEN (the national health care provider) and get reimbursed. I run to the pharmacy, fill all five ordonnances immediately, am charged another negligible fee, and now am here trying to take all these ridiculous pills with a semblance of a meal so that I don't vomit all over the Strasbourg cathedral (though I have a plan in case I do!)

Verdict: French health care system, you win.

Paris tomorrow for Christmas with the Smucker clan!