The Toothache Diary Chapter 9

TOOTHACHE DIARY
CHAPTER 9



“Aspirin? Regina overdosed on aspirin? How is that possible? Aspirin is harmless.”
“No drug is harmless. Aspirin is a mild drug. It has good uses, if taken properly. Officially, your sister wasn’t taking them properly.”
“How much is too much?”
“Well it depends on the person. You have to factor in height, weight, body mass. And of course how much they ingested. And from the looks of it, Regina ingested a lot.

Sissy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her older sister was getting “high” off of aspirin. Alcohol and drug addiction has plagued this family for years. From the maternal and paternal side. Most family members beat their addiction and came out ok. Some are still hooked on the “stuff”. Sissy knows all to well what drug addiction can do to a person. She just never knew her sister was one of “them”.
“Doctor, how bad is my sister? Will she be ok?”
“Aspirin poisoning has three different stages. Regina is in phase two. Phase two consists of respiratory alkalosis. This caused by loss of potassium in her kidneys. Surprisingly it doesn’t look as if she’s done any long term damage. With your permission, we would need to give Regina active charcoal to absorb the rest of the aspirin in her system.”
“Yes yes of course. Do whatever it takes to help her. My God, my poor sister.”

“Like I mentioned before, Regina is in phase 2 of aspirin poisoning. Obviously, the symptoms are fairly severe. But before a person gets to phase two, they have symptoms from the first phase. Things like nausea, vomiting, lethargy, dizziness and stupor occur during this phase. Didn’t anyone notice something was wrong? No one noticed she was sick?”

Sissy had to think back a little bit. Was Regina acting different? She was always tired, she was slow, and she breathed funny. Yeah, there was something wrong. But Sissy was so busy bragging about her wonderful career and how Regina needed to get her shit together that she didn’t notice how sick Regina was.

“Yes doctor, I noticed she was tired a lot. I just assumed it was because of work.”
“Does Regina suffer from depression?”
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why?”
“Because I can’t figure out why an adult would purposely poison themselves with aspirin. There’s no way this could have been an accident. Has she ever mentioned suicide or made hints that she wasn’t happy with life? There had to be something that triggered this behavior. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to take a shit load of aspirin just for kicks.”


“Have you seen her teeth?”
The doctor and Sissy turn around to face Regina’s oldest daughter. She’s been sitting there the entire time listening to her aunt and the doctor discuss her mother’s condition. She’s not too surprised that she’s sitting in the hospital waiting room while her mother is being cared for. Deep down she knew this day would come. How could it not?
For the past three months she watched her mother pop aspirin like they were Tic Tacs. Her mother was turning into an addict right before her very eyes. But she said nothing. She did nothing. “What goes on in this house, stays in this house” is what she was taught.

“Have you seen her teeth?” she asked again.
“Um…no. What does that have to do with…
“You should go look at her teeth. Go. Take a look at my mothers’ mouth. Go see for yourself. Take pictures. Do some x-rays. You need to see her teeth.”

Sissy and the doctor just looked at each other. The doctor shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the waiting room. He walked down the long hallway. After passing through a couple of double doors and walking down another hallway he stopped in front of room 208B. That was Regina’s room. He opened the door and walked in just as Regina was waking up…..