So... This is kind of a whiny rant.
I'm going to the dentist today. Again. This is time is the sixth for this summer. Between the end of May and today, July 10, I have been six times. Six. This is too many.
I've had some rotten dental experiences in my life. Sure, nobody enjoys going to the dentist. I'm not special in that regard. However, due to the nature of my teeth (they're incredibly soft, get cavities in an instant, and the baby ones wouldn't fall out when I was younger), I've had a few more than most.
My dental woes began when I was only six or seven years old. My baby teeth wouldn't fall out on their own, so I had to start going to a dentist to get them pulled out. For such a young kid, this is quite traumatic. It involves a large shot of novocaine (seemingly much larger when you only weigh sixty pounds or so..., and when it is referred to by that particular dentist as "the Magic Icicle," which sounds fun and pleasant, until you open your six-year old eyes and figure out that it really, really isn't...), huge pliers, and quite a bit of blood. My two predominant memories from all of these pulled teeth (a total of eight baby teeth) are 1) the complete hysterics I would launch into as soon as Mom or Dad told me that we were headed to the dentist for something other than a cleaning, and 2) biting on those little cigar-shaped pieces of gauze which, when soaked through with blood, would have to be replaced with new cigar-shaped pieces of gauze for a number of hours. Ick.
Following all of my pulled teeth, we found out that I had too many permanent teeth for my mouth size. Don't ask me what the deal is with that. So I got to have four permanent teeth pulled when I was about twelve, which involved (God bless my parents) me being knocked out. Apparently when they gave me the pre-going-under gas I became totally violent and had to be strapped to the chair. What can I say? As soon as I'm uninhibited by medication, my true self starts to come out, and that true self DOES NOT want to be in a dentist chair.
I'll spare you the rest of the tale of woe, but it involves braces, retainers, over a dozen cavities, an emergency root canal in Davenport, Iowa, a dentist who tried to open my small mouth wider by force, a dentist who told me I had "absolutely no cavities" (leading to a cavity-ridden molar that cracked into a whole bunch of pieces in Nebraska), over a dozen MORE cavities, a crown (which, by the way, costs nearly as much as a decent used car), twelve more cavities to be filled this summer, and near-OCD brushing and flossing that still seems to make no difference. Oh, and no dental insurance. Oh, and I'm only twenty-five years old. Good thing I like applesauce, because in ten years or so, I'm probably going to be wearing dentures and sipping my dinner through a straw.
What this has led to is a type of near-phobia that is usually only reserved for death and spiders. In the waiting room I find myself hyperventilating, no matter how hard I try to concentrate on the Living Simple magazine. When I sit in the dentist's chair I have to keep singing hymns in my head so I don't start to cry. I'm an adjunct professor, a preaching pastoral intern, and a marathon runner, and the dentist practically makes me cry. I hate the sound of the drill, I hate the shots of the painkillers, I hate the drooling I do out of whichever side of my mouth has been numbed. I hate the pressure and the smells and the instruments and the mysterious noises the dentist and hygienists make when they're examining my mouth. There are few things in this world I hate more than going to the dentist.
The only upside on this whole thing is that Daryl and I have managed to find an incredibly kind, gentle dentist. I don't know how he does it, but even the shot of novocaine hardly hurts. And after he sticks me in the mouth, he apologizes. This is helping. A little.
Also helping is Daryl, who is incredibly sympathetic and buys me lots of milkshakes.
So today, back to the dentist again. Three more cavities filled. Again. Two hours in the dentist chair. Again.
And to add fun to this whole thing, here is Daryl's complete dental history:
A yearly cleaning.
That's it. No braces, no cavities, no root canals. And he hardly even flosses. Grrrrrr. We've started praying regularly that our future children will inherit Daryl's teeth and not mine. At least until we have dental insurance.
