More about Debbie's Mouth

Today has been very long. I'll try to keep the events in order.
Because Deb had been so hurt yesterday, I wanted to talk to the dentist and get an understanding of what is going on. I was alarmed by her reaction. She was not feeling well and looked really shaky.
This morning, she looked a little better, but seemed listless and easily distracted. I was trying to urge her along, without getting bossy but trying to get her out in time to meet our taxi.
We returned to the dentist. After awhile, Deb was trembling, felt sick and had to get to somewhere cool. The general waiting room is not warm, just not kept very cool. They moved her into a small waiting room, with an air conditioner, and turned it up to maximum. She still felt nauseous.
Then they moved her to a dental suite, let her lay back in the chair, and put auxiliary oxygen on her. Even then she wasn't feeling good, so they called for emergency medical services. Three men showed up and examined her. They took her temperature, checked her pulse, blood pressure and generally checked her out.
They diagnosed her as being in nicotine withdrawal. She had been cutting way back on smoking, and as a result, she had a pretty bad reaction. They explained that nicotine withdrawal can be pretty severe. Combined with the stress of dental work, she had crossed some boundary, and her body was reacting badly.
The main guy, wrote out a prescription for a nicotine patch. They packed up, and wished us well. Deb stayed in the chair until she felt a little better, and we called a taxi.
I haven't really described traffic in San Jose. Briefly, it is very busy, very aggressive, and very crowded. Taxis are generally small diesel cars, manual transmission and driven by men with years of experience threading their vehicles through small openings.
That said, we get into a taxi, and the driver began fighting his way back to the Alta. We charged ahead, braked and then took off again. At one point, traffic stopped and we screeched to a halt. Deb was trying to keep from throwing up, while being jostled around in the taxi. When we finally reached the Alta, as we pulled around the tight drive, Deb bailed out of the moving taxi. I jumped out of my side, and went over to Deb as she threw up in the gutter. The doorman came over with a bottle of water, and Deb rinsed her mouth.
I got her up to our room, settled her into bed.
Back down to the front desk, talking to the clerk. "I need a taxi to take me to an ATM, and a farmacia."
"Yes," she said. Then paused as she translated what I said into Spanish.
She called a taxi, and I waited, hoping her grasp of English was better than my Spanish.
After a while, a red micro-bus came down the drive. The doorman spoke to the driver, and I climbed in.
This driver was not as good as our other drivers have been. He crowded the oncoming traffic. At one point, he cut off a driver who was trying to crowd him. But he did get me to a strip mall with a bank, and a pharmacy.
The bank gave me some local currency, for taxi fare. The pharmacy looked at my prescription, and the girl behind the counter got this concerned look. They conferred, and checked on boxes on the shelf. Finally, one woman explained that this was not a prescription item, and she gave me the prescription back. But, they didn't have the prescribed product. The prescription called for Step one of the patches. They only had the final step. But, two of the final step are the same level as one of the first step. So I bought two boxes. It seems that a lot of people buy the first step, to start quitting smoking, some people get to the second step. But the pharmacy didn't run out of the final step.
Anyway, I got back to the hotel, alive. and got Deb patched up. She did feel better, so it seems that they were right.