In the Company of Misery

I went to the dentist today intensifying yesterday's misery to pure wretchedness. I hate going to the dentist. When I was 9 years old, we were in West Virginia with my dad at a golf tournament and while taking an after-dinner dip in the pool, I dove into the shallow end. When I came up for a breath, I was missing my two front teeth. Since then, I've been in and out of the dentist office getting them replaced, tweaked and renewed. It's traumatic. Dentists smother me with a dental dam. I choke, drown, and gag, only to be released with a lop-sided and tingly face. But that's not the end of the mortification. When the Novocaine wears off, my face hurts. My entire face. I can't eat, I can't smile, I can't think straight. For a couple days.

And today he was finally fixing a broken tooth (remember this fiasco?). I'm finally getting the permanent crown on it which, A) is really, really expensive, and 2) hurts like a motherfucker. Today, he ground down what was left of my tooth to little nubs (the choking), made 2 molds (the gagging), and fitted them with a temporary crown until the porcelain one can be made (and thus, the drowning). I ate soup before I left (because remember, I'm coming down with a cold too) and tried to eat a piece of bread and butter for dinner. No dice. I can't put my teeth together at all without a firebolt of agony making it's way out the top of my head. And I have a very high tolerance for pain. (Really, I have Proof - 2 babies, no drugs, no epidural. All the proof I need.) But today, my face hurts from my eyesocket all the way down to the middle of my chin. And it's turning me into a quivering puddle of woe.

So while I'm lying there, I'm trying to analyze why I hate going to the dentist even more than going to the gynecologist, and I think I figured it out: It's too intimate. On the surface, what could be more intimate than having your legs up in stirrups, talking to a man-stranger, while only his eyes and forehead are showing above the sheet separating your exposed hoo-ha from the rest of the world? But laying back in the chair for two hours, with my head basically in his lap, while his face is only about 6 inches away from mine, while I try to see the reflection of my teeth in his glasses, not having to make senseless small talk, is a much more personal encounter for me. And it makes me uncomfortable.

And then he hurts me. And I don't like that.