Tooth Dust

(I regret initially searching on Google Images for "Fist in the Mouth". Some things can never be unseen.)

Does everyone remember how when you were a little kid there were these things you looked forward to for weeks.

Christmas morning. The last day of school. The next Disney movie (um... still.)

None of these, however, could ever take top the sheer thrill and exhilaration of your biannual trip to the dentist.

That crotchety old son of a bitch.

That's why last Tuesday was so fucking special. I had the rare chance to make my second dentist visit in just under a month. How amazing is that?! It was my fifth visit in 10 months!

You see.... almost a year ago I went in to see good old Crotchety Bastard ("C.B." for short) because my face was in this excruciating pain. It felt like I was sucking on a hot coal as though it were a god damned lolly. Turns out that I had a particularly nasty cavity. I subsequently made 2 more trips to the old C.B. One trip to get a "medicated temporary filling" and then a trip out to the other, more specialized and slightly richer and less crotchety Bastard number two, who gave me a root canal

Damn was that fun. There's nothing like being in the dentist's chair, face numbed to the point of stupidity, and having them get their little pointy hooky things inside from crevice of tooth and start yanking like they're starting a tiny lawn mower.

So anyway, after the root canal, the other, more specialized and slightly richer and less crotchety bastard number two gave me another filling, and said no more. I assumed this was it.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when I was biting down on a piece of soft, chewy pizza and the whole fucking tooth broke off. Like.. snapped at the stem. It's hard to really describe how upsetting it is when your tooth breaks off while not participating in a rock-chewing competition or some bare knuckle brawl, but rather eating a soft and innocuous piece of glorified bread. I can tell you that it was not cool at all. AT. ALL.

So I go back to C.B's office and he's all...

"You never came back for your permanent filling. "

and I'm all...

"What the eff are you talking about you Crotchety old Bastard?" (paraphrasing)

Turns out that filling the other, more specialized and slightly richer and less crotchety bastard number two gave me was ALSO supposed to be temporary and I was supposed to come back for yet another visit to the C.Bs office to get a permanent filling put in. Did anyone tell me this? No. No they did not.

So, the CB give's me some shit about being a bad dental patient and whatnot, because I was supposed to read their fucking minds or whatever, and gives me another "temporary medicated filling", and tells me to come back in a couple of weeks, because, lucky me... I get to have a crown.

That brings us to last Tuesday.

So I go back to the CBs office once again, and the first thing he does is stick me right in the mouth with some sort of numbing agent. My favorite part of this is that every time he does it (I've had it done enough in the past year that I actually have picked up patterns), he goes "Eaassy. Eaaaasy." Like I'm a god damned wild horse or something that needs to be tamed. Then he stabs me in the mouth.

So I'm getting good and numbed up, and I bust out my Anti-Dentists balm (aka: Carmex) and I give my lips a good lathering. Apparently I have a hard time keeping my mouth open wide enough, so I'm always getting yanked around, and getting my lips cracked and bloody and whatnot. It's not a fun time. So I come prepared with loads of lip balm and moisturizing stuff.

Anyway, I lather on a good amount of it, and go back to reading Entertainment Weekly. The dentist always seems to be seeing multiple patients at once, so I typically come prepared to wait in between. The strangest thing about it is that he doesn't have full walls in his office between examining areas, so you can hear everything going on in the other rooms. I can only imagine what horrors some child would feel while hearing my teeth get ground and drilled.

So, finally the CB comes back and immediately grabs my mouth like an angler grabbing a scrod.

Then he proceeds to violate my mouth.

The exact details of events are a little unclear, I have to be honest. I think it's a defense mechanism. There are three things that DO stand out.

1) At one point, he has his index finger hooked in the corner of my mouth like fucking Bass-Masters or something, and he keeps having these incidental conversations with other people while absentmindedly keeping his finger hooked in there. It was totally insane. By the time he was through, I had a deep gash in the corner of my mouth, and my lips were red with blood again. All of the Carmex in the world couldn't have saved my mouth from the fish hook.

2) Toward the end of the ordeal, the dentist was shoving a huge amount of this pasty stuff that eventually dries to become a filling, and after he sort of shapes it down, he has the tech-lady shine this blue light in my mouth. I don't have a funny story about that. I just thought it was weird.

3) The last thing the CB did was shave down my (now filled) tooth. There's something incredibly unpleasant about the sight, sound, and smell of having your tooth ground down. I generally keep my eyes closed during the dental procedures, as it helps me stay relaxed. Generally, I don't want to know what's happening to me. This time, I made the mistake of opening my eyes as he was grinding my mouth with a glorified Dremel tool, and I see a cloud above my head. Tooth dust. There was a fucking cloud of my TOOTH flying around the air. I took a sharp breath. I couldn't help it. This was a mistake. I breathed in a lung-load of my own tooth. The realization hit me, and I immediately breathed out again. I had a cloud of own, aspirated tooth dust coming out of my mouth like a sicko dragon.

I have another appointment on Tuesday.