I Say "This Week", You Say "Sucks!!"

Okay, so this is going to be out of place chronologically... But in the name of humor, I feel like putting up some funny stories. These may not necessarily reflect reality in some cases, or even my true feelings. But all the same... This Week Sucks.

So we left for Norway on Wednesday (April 22). We arrived in Riga via a bus, and we just headed straight to the airport to be certain we would be fine with our flights. The sucking of this week started on Wednesday, April 22.

We were getting close to boarding time, and we were excited!! Norway!! We were going to canoe and hike in the fjords of NORWAY!!! We were gonna get our nature on - "Ladies and gentlemen, our flight from Riga to Bremen, Germany has been delayed. We will now be departing at 3:50PM. Thank you." This is our reaction: "(*#$^%@#!! #$*!@%!(@*)#*!!! Really?!?!" This new departure time is the departure time from our flight in Bremen, Germany to Haugesund, Norway. We have missed our flight to Norway.

We fly to Bremen, and we interrogate the workers to see if there's other flights we can make. This is not true. Our flight was the only flight that week. We have paid for bus tickets and a night in a VERY EXPENSIVE hotel for nothing. Chuck $70 in the wind for each of us. UGH.

So we headed to the Bremen train station, and without a group decision, we bought tickets to Berlin. I'll write a separate blog, one that is happier, about Berlin. It was DEATH getting there. My Hungarian roommate had only let me get 3 hours of sleep the night before with conversation, and then suddenly I was on trains until 2 in the morning the next day. I wanted to die. But Berlin was amazing, and I'm sooo happy we went there. I LOVE that city.

We returned from Berlin. A wonderful trip. And this week (the current week that is now ending at the time of this post) is Student Week in Tartu, when the students are given the keys to the city and rule for a week. It's a LONG tradition, and I've been looking forward to it for months.

On Monday, however, my back right wisdom tooth is a little sensitive. This happens to me after long trips and lack of sleep, so I didn't think about it. Then TUESDAY happened. My face is swollen. My right cheek is easily twice as thick, there's a sensitive bump on the jaw bone on the right side, and I'm having difficulty opening my mouth. Hmm... Time for a dentist, I think.

I schedule an appointment on Tuesday for Wednesday night, after my Law class. According to my schedule, I missed a Russian test on my trip to Berlin, so I needed to study to make up for it. I go to class... no test. Instead, our test is moved to Thursday and is considerably larger in the materials it covers. Um... In the middle of Student Week?! Really?!?! UGH!!!

Then I go to the dentist after my Law course. This week REALLY REALLY sucks at this point. NO ONE in the office spoke English, and after 4 office shuffles and really poor Russian on my part, I finally got to the dentist's office. I sit down in the chair, and luckily my dentist knows English. So I explain my symptoms, she says, "Yes." Then she leans me back, and says, "We're making injection."

I've never had a painful visit to a dentist's office. I've never had a cavity, root canal, or anything other than some picking with an iron hook. But when I saw that crooked needle, I kind of screamed on the inside. And she added the anesthesia, and it was painful, but it was immediate pain, so it wasn't that bad. And she and her colleague just spoke in Estonian as the drugs numbed my right gum. Then she started picking at the area to test the numbing. Suddenly a pair of scissors is in my mouth, and I can "hear" it make an incision.

My heart is sooo fast at this point. After the scissors, the assistant pulls out this glass jar and pulls out what appears to be green shoelace. They cut a small piece and they place it in the incision they've made (honestly, for 1 second, I swore they were gonna pull a leech out of the jar, don't ask me why). Then they put a cotton square, say, "Bite down," and then gave me a prescription. I go down, fill it, and after a horrible process understand the directions.

I was given antibiotics, not painkillers. I have an infection in my face, I understand this. But I had to go online to look up the antibiotics to read the warnings. I can't drink alcohol, as it causes a RAPID change in blood chemistry and can be fatal. Awesome. I can't drink during Student Week, THE celebration of the year. Then... the pain set in.

Holy crap, when the anesthesia wore off, HOLY CRAP. Pain. And not immediate, sharp pain. But constant, high level pain. Granted, there's several layers higher in the pain tree, I'm surely aware. But it was kind of ridiculous. WAAAAY more painful than before. Luckily, I packed Extra Strength Tylenol - WOOT. Saved my day. That and Kelsey volunteered to cook me some soup. Kelsey = my hero. hahaha.

So I wake up on Thursday. The pain is largely gone. Woot woot. But I have go to to the dentist office at 9AM for a check-up. I go, the process is MUCH easier this time around. I get seen by another dentist, and I go to find out what's up with my face now. I get more anesthesia. WAY MORE. My entire right face is numb. Then he pulls out a scalpel, and I FLIP on the inside. And he cuts out the shoestring. He said it was a "medicated cord" and that he would take it out. He failed to mention that he was going to put more medicated cord in... or that he was going to use the scalpel to enlarge the hole in my face. So suddenly, I have a huge hole in my mouth, filled by more shoestring.

But I ask more questions this time around, and I'm free to eat anything I want, but yes, I should avoid alcohol (avoid seemed a pretty light use of the word considering what I had read, but not everything on the Internet is true... regardless, I have not been drinking while on the antibiotics). I ask for painkiller prescription, because it hurt really bad last time. He agrees, I am happy.

I go back to my room to eat breakfast and have one of my antibiotic pills for the day. And the painkillers they prescribed, FAIL. Pain is kind of ridiculous. So I go against my usual judgement of taking pills, and I take Tylenol again. Relief. Love Extra Strength. hahaha. But I'm tired, so I lay down for a small nap.

Then I get up and start studying for my rather large Russian language exam. It was rather large, indeed. I had a lot more to study for than I thought. But I think it went well, although it was so hard not to smile and swallow. hahaha. I missed swallowing a lot at this point.

And so this continued. Thursday night was a cool night for Student Days, I'll post about that happiness later... But Friday (yesterday) was my 12km race in Viljandi, a running tradition in Estonia that's 80 years long. AND I CAN'T RUN IT. Considering my complete lack of significant food consumption starting on Wednesday, there's nothing for me to run on. I don't have the food for the energy, and my workout on Monday showed that my strength was low anyway. So I didn't run.

I just went to Viljandi and watched the race. It might have been the most beautiful day in Estonia and the hills in Viljandi are GORGEOUS. And the race had 3,340 runners... I wanted to RUN SO BADLY. But it would have just turned into a pitiful jog and nothing race-worthy. So I watched a race most bitterly. I felt like freshman year with my hip fractured all over again. I HATE watching races and being unable to compete. Ugh.

And there is nothing worse than cheering at the finish line amongst an Estonian crowd. It is the QUIETEST CROWD on the face of the planet. Now, I hope I've mentioned in earlier posts that Estonians are naturally/culturally geared towards silence in life. But even at this sporting event, there was nothing more than hand-clapping. Now all that have ever had me cheer for them at a running event, know that I like to CHEER. I like to get all up in your ears and make you hear my encouragement. Well... not at this race. It would have been MAJOR social embarrassment. Ugh. I couldn't even cheer. It was the worst crowd ever. Had I been racing, I would have hated finishing with that crowd cheering me on. Probably would have made me feel like finishing, considering I had just raced 12 kilometers to hardly get anything more than a clap. hahaha.

I suppose an interesting/agonizing highlight of this trip was learning a special thing about my coach. Coach Lemberg is somewhat of a legend in Estonia. I think it's mostly because he's Estonia's Olympic trainer, but I think it also has to do with the fact that he was a pretty good runner at one point. But everyone was asking to take pictures with him in Viljandi, it was interesting. The agonizing part? Coach LOVES the band "Smokie". We listened to Smokie's Greatest Hits over and over on our way to and from Viljandi. To give you an idea of the crappiest lyrics of my life, here is my favorite line:
"If love is what you want,
Love is what you've got.
Love like a rocket,
A rocket to your heart."
Another favorite:
"Open my heart,
Take a look at my soul."
HOLY CRAP, I wanted to build a shotgun and blow my brains out. Worst soundtrack for roadtripping ever. But I love Coach Lemberg, so I don't hold it against him... too badly.

This week sucks.

There were good things, though, and I'll post on those later. Just needed to send out the bitter pill, so that I can be upbeat afterwards. haha.