That’s what I’m thinking about at the moment:  nothing but the tooth. Or teeth, actually:  two big juicy ones in the back on the bottom that have the whole of my head throbbing.

Today started as most others do:  filled with optimism. Places to go, things to do. Progress to be made! Then I checked in on my day’s schedule and saw “2 PM. Dentist.” And I knew what that meant. The first in the latest series of procedures, excavations, exhumations, and consternations. My body stayed in motion toward the door, but my heart slunk upstairs back under the covers. It’s especially dispiriting when everything feels jim-dandy in your mouth, but you know that in a few short hours nothing will feel good.

For the record:  I brush regularly. I floss regularly. I don’t eat candy or drink soda. But I’m sure I serve as an unsung case study in dental schools across the nation. At age 14 I had three front teeth capped — three! At age 14! I didn’t break them; they just… fell apart. This runs in my family. Before the air force put my  brother in active duty, they set about fixing all his teeth. By his 20’s, my father had already lost most of his teeth before opting for full extraction and dentures. I’ve had crowns, root canals, extractions, and so many metal fillings I’m surprised I can pass airport security. In our family we haven’t seen a lot of overweight, heart disease, strokes, cancer, or other ailments, but we have definitely felt the bite of genetics in this other way.

When I go to the dentist, I feel like the first steer walked into the abattoir. Without going into the full horrors of today’s experience, let me note the strange sensation of opening your eyes to see your own blood sprayed across two other people’s faces. I always ask for a mirror so I can see the various stages of what’s being done (imagery that will inform my eventual dental horror drama, I’m sure), and the way it feels and tastes rarely matches up with the miserable little image of some blood, odd stalagmites of bone or metal, and sometimes yawning pits of pulsating nerve. Today was no different. “That’s it?” I asked, looking at a reflected diorama very much at odds with all the drilling, sawing, hammering, and epoxying that had just taken place. Once it was all done, it didn’t seem that bad.

Until an hour later. When the novocaine wore off. And now, like that steer, I felt a hammer coming down on my head. Again and again. It’s now five hours later. It still feels like that. So I’m going to fix a big nasty drink — a drink-drink — and go sleep it off.

I go back in two weeks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.