A root canal and a bottle of Tylenol 3: I take two.

About 30 minutes later, life is so very good. Oh how I love my cats, my partner, my family members (both dead and alive) and the space I occupy here on the 5th floor of my condo building. I really believe in God and love and peace and stuff.

And the pain in my jaw is gone, which was the point, after all.

Two hours later I go to bed. The codeine leaves me dangling midway between wakefulness and sleep in a darkened alley, where the manhole to my subconscious has been pried open and an endless stream of bizarre and colorful characters crowd out to cavort and carry on around me–busy, noisy, chaotic, but not altogether unpleasant. It's entertaining, though I do wish they would keep it down so I could sleep.

I'm fascinated by the contrast between the quiet, amiable calm I felt reading on the couch, and the wondrously absurd semi-dreams I experienced lying in the dark.

As I always say when describing these occasional pain-relief experiences: Thanks to the codeine, I'm not sleeping. Thanks to the codeine, I don't really care.

Text and image © 2011 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.