Heavy Is the Tooth That Wears the Crown

First I must tell you of my old dentist. Her initials were AR and she was awesome.

AR had the gift of gab. I loved to talk to her. It's always a bonus to have a personable dentist.

But most importantly, she was gentle. Before she gave the novocaine shot she swabbed the inside of my mouth with a topical pain reliever. The actual shot felt like a little pinch.

AR left her practice and sold it to some friends. They inherited me and her other patients, the ones who chose to stay. I am beginning to question the fact that I stayed.

The new dentist I see is a man. The verdict is still out on his personality. It took three visits to warm up to him. He has no gift of gab. It could be that he is reserved or it could be that his accent is so heavy that he tired of hearing his patients say, "Huh?"

Of course what can you say but huh when your mouth is wide open?

I don't like going to the dentist in the first place. An accurate statement of my feelings for the dentist is that they are right up there with the gynecologist, or should I say right down there?

Either way I'm wide open with somebody digging around. With the gynecologist's end, it's embarrassing. With the dentist's end it's painful.

Maybe this is why the one stop dental/ob/gyn office never caught on.

Sadly I have to have a crown. A crown is what you end up with when a cavity gets too big to fill. If the crown doesn't take, you end up with a root canal. But let's not sail down that way yet.

This Tuesday was my visit for the temporary crown. First the dental assistant gave me something to bite on. She didn't even warn me the consistency was that of modeling clay. She just told me that I needed to bite on it for a "few minutes." Then she put it in my mouth.

And I waited and waited and waited. I still had the remnants of the cold Azure gave me so I had some lovely, thick post-nasal drip sliding down my throat. Then I had the slobber my mouth was generating because something was in it. It's hard to swallow when your mouth is half open so I was also fighting my ever-ready gag reflex.

The dentist came up to look at this thing in my mouth. He told me to keep clamping down. So then I was clamping down while he lifted up my lips and peered. I seriously wanted to go, "Neeeeeeigh," but I didn't think he would find it funny.

After the modeling clay contraption was removed from my mouth he decided to numb me. First he put on the topical. Then he gave me the shots. The first shot wasn't too bad but the second shot - holey moley!

He pushed the needle in.
He pulled the needle out.
He crammed the needle in.
And he swirled it all about.
He did the hokey pokey while he twirled that thing around.
And I couldn't even shout.

It felt like that too.

After we decreed it numbed, he started drilling. Only I could feel it.

He said some people were like that, there were some extra nerves (oh lucky me) and he numbed in a different spot.

Then he drilled. I started gagging due to all the stuff sitting in my throat. He told me to try to breathe through my nose. Breathing through my nose wasn't the point. It was all the crap sitting on top of my gag reflex.

I swear the drilling took forever.

I can't remember the next step. I think it involved a plate in the lower part of my mouth. It was too big. One would think as much as I stick my foot in my mouth it would be stretched out enough that it would be hard to find a plate BIG enough for my mouth.

In fact I'm surprised they didn't have to call Mick Jagger's dentist.

Then the dental assistant crammed another plate in the top of my mouth. Only there was a sore spot in the top of my mouth I had been unaware of until then. I jumped a foot. She pulled it out to put glue or rubber cement or some such shit on it. Then she wrestled it right back in with all the finesse of someone cramming a size eight shoe on a size ten foot.

I remember more plates, one of them the denist had to hold in my mouth for about five minutes. You don't know weird until you've had to sit with a person's fingers in your mouth for five minutes.

There was lots of biting down involved. Too bad none of it was on the dentist's fingers.

Finally the temporary crown was on and I was done. I may have finally hit that dreamed of eight minute mile getting out of there.

After the novocaine wore off my jaw hurt. I used one of my precious eight-hundred milligram motrins at bedtime. That left me with two.

I noticed I was drooling out of the left side of my mouth when I slept. I still am.

I can't chew on my left side. It's sensitive to hot and cold. Sometimes the left side of my jaw aches. Sometimes my jaw quits hurting long enough for me to feel the pain that's radiating up to both ears.

I have a doctor's appointment Tuesday for something unrelated. I'll be sure to ask for more eight-hundred milligram motrin while I'm there.

If the permanent crown is like this, I'm going to a different dentist to do the hokey pokey.

Wanted: One gentle dentist. Your needle must inflict no pain and your dental assistant must promptly suction the drool off my tonsils. Please call 555-1234. Hurry!