2% LIDOCAINE

You might be surprised about the title of this blog; Lidocaine huh, sounds familiar to the medical people like me and to not so medical but somehow knows the basics of medicines and pharmaceutical drugs. When I think of Lidocaine, I think of “PAIN” and I think of “NUMB” at the same time, wishing that these two always come together.

I’ve gone to the dentist 8 hours ago and I lost a tooth, one of my left lower molars. I was amazed of how a tooth looks like when it’s out of our gums, its inside is much longer than the outside, how the hell did it grew like that? Hahaha. The dentist put a topical Lidocaine on my gums proximal to the tooth that needs to be extracted. After 2 minutes, she injected 2% Lidocaine on the areas next to the tooth. We waited for another 2-3 minutes before the extraction of the tooth. While waiting, I slowly felt the numbness on the lower left side of my mouth, my tongue and my lips, and I can barely talk with that kind of feeling. I have a lot of “if’s” and “but’s” on my mind, my mind wandered.

I just thought that if the pain is unbearable, why we have to feel another pain to let go of that pain? Sounds confusing but makes sense to me. I guess it’s human nature, to feel a lot of pain, to make us realize how stressful and at the same time how precious our lives can be;  and without pain, people never learn and never change for the better, in vernacular, “hindi na nadadala”. But there are different kinds of pain; emotional pain, physical pain, financial pain (?), mental pain (information overload) and a lot more, it varies based on the people who experience it since we have different levels of perception; what’s more painful to me can be less painful to you and vice versa.

I, like any other person has experienced different kinds of pain, different levels of perception, different causes, and with that, I applied different remedies and coping mechanisms. When my back hurts, I distract myself but when my heart hurts, I cry, and that’s normal. Emotional pain is my most hated kind of pain. I remembered how painful it was when I had my labor on my first born son, it’s the most painful physical pain I encountered in my whole life (but so rewarding and self fulfilling). Good thing we have anesthetics, sedatives, etc to fight those pains, some are addictive, some are not. Some needs prescription and dosage, some are over the counter. Some are cheap and some are freakin’ expensive. But they’re labeled the same, we call them “drugs”, “painkillers”, “pain reliever”, “analgesics”, etc.

This are the last “if’s” and “but’s” in my mind before I went out at the dental clinic – What if we have over the counter or prescription drugs for emotional pain? What if everyone will just feel numb during every crisis? What if no one experiences pain, what will the world be? I guess that would be great and everyone will just feel amazed as how amazed I am seeing how my tooth looks like out of my gum…BUT does it really matter? To feel numb on every pain? Without pain, life will be useless, life will be easy, and life will be boring, life will be shallow. We will be like walking robots feeling numb. No more “SORRY”, no more forgiveness and reconciliation, I will really hate that kind of world. Masochists and sadists will also hate a world without pain. I conclude, pain is a significant thing like air and no one can change that.

Now, time for my analgesics, I can’t skip one ‘coz I gotta work in the morning. Oh how I love pain, no pain, no gain. ;)