Rachael McCall Clegg + Photography: My tooth & Spain!

One week ago today, I had my bags packed and was ready to embark on my adventure with Shane.

My parents were so helpful in the hours before I left. Let me begin with my day of leaving America:

A week and a half prior to this Monday of departure I had a crown put on my left back tooth.

Was in that dentist chair for four hours, as he was "running into little problems"

After the four hours of my mouth locked open, I instantly feared now closing my mouth because I felt like my jaw was locked or something strange. I went to bed that night pretty much still numb (due to about 10 shots they gave me in those 4 hours) I woke up on Saturday and felt fine.

I decided to take a vicodin in the afternoon though because it sort of began.

Began= the pain that got extremely worse over the next 2 week span

My dad had only a few extra vicodins from a previous surgery so I took those twice a day until I left on Tuesday.

I went up to Berkeley on Tuesday for Shanes birthday then was there until Saturday because of the wedding I was shooting on Friday. Everyday my entire left side of my jaw progressively got worse. I started loosing serious sleep and started feeling sick every single morning because of it, but I had to push through until I got back home to Southern California to see my dentist! Sunday night I could not fall asleep because the pain had gotten so bad, I would grip my entire jaw and just rock back and forth, knowing there was nothing I could do but wait for the pain to pass. I started crying and went up to my moms room because Moms always make things better. My dad came in the room ( this is 2 in the morning might I add ) and gave me a blessing. A blessing that things would go smoothly from the point out and for the pain to lessen.

I fell asleep 10 minutes later.

I woke up Monday morning ( the day I was leaving to ROME! ) and went first thing to the dentist.

My dentist worked on me for a few hours as I laid their with numerous things running through my mind. Things on my checklist to have done by the time I was going to leave at noon, worries that he wasn't going to fix it and I was going to have to come back from Italy JUST because of this tooth situation, worries that everything would go smoothly at the airport and long travels to Rome.

So the problem with my tooth was when he put the crown on, my bite was not entirely on, if your bite is off, then you can be in serious pain. Pain that I can not describe, I felt like someone was pulling all my nerves and gums into a ball then twisting that ball for a good five to ten minutes at a time. Oh ya and then topping it off with a sluj-hammer to the entire left side of my mouth.

The dentist loaded with me up with a bottle of Vicodin in case I was in extreme pain through my travels, a few bags of Motrin, and amoxicillin for an infection that might come about. I felt like a serious pill popper, but it was so necessary.

I hate to still continue with my complaining story, but I have to tell how my excruciating pain ended just two days ago. And why I am not the happiest person in the world because it is gone!

So my flight to Spain...

4 times on a 12 hours flight I had that same 5 minutes of miserable pain. Thinking "just a few more days hopefully and it will be gone. It is still wearing off from before the dentist fixed it, it will get better" 2 of the 4 times on the plane, I cried again because it was so bad. Everytime I drank water or anything it would happen. But I was always so thirsty, so I would wait until I NEEDED that water then know I was going to have to fight through the 5 minute pain.

We finally arrived in Spain, we arrived to most awesome airport I have ever seen in my life!

We left our luggage in a locker because we had about an 18 our layover in Madrid and we knew we would be doing lots of exploring. We took a bus to downtown and began our walking. I have never really thought about Madrid nor knew at all what it would be like. I now know, Madrid is beautiful! It is one of the cleanest cities I have ever been to and one of the most fascinating places I have ever seen! It was glamourous, beautiful, big, had amazing buildings, and so much more. The excitement of this amazing city made my pain of my tooth ( sort of ) go away.

We then realized, we were very jet-lagged. Arriving to Madrid at 2pm was 6am California time. We didn't sleep too much on the plane and after all that walking around in Madrid we were like, wow we are exhausted. So we went to a hostile and stayed for the night because we still had until the next day at noon-ish till out flight to Rome. Hostiles are interesting, fun and interesting concepts. Cheap too!

I couldn't sleep, once again because of my tooth ache, so we were both wide awake at like 3:30 am. I was starving in this hostile, I couldnt take any pills on my empty stomach because then I feel sick, so we had to wait until something opened. As soon as 7 am or so hit, we up and left back into the streets of Madrid. We found a cafe open, got donuts then walked over to the huge park of Madrid.

This park was AMAZING, I can't quite describe it besides that fact that it was beautiful. We watched the sun rise by the man made lake inside the park, it was glorious.

We made a few more necessary stops as we were in Madrid then made our way back to the airport.

To Rome we go...