2004-01-27

Oh, how I long to feel my face!

I just got back from the dentist�s office, whereat I learned a valuable lesson; namely, that the elapsed time between dentist appointments is proportionately related to the misery experienced during each subsequent appointment. And I�d been putting this one off for a long old time. Like, the last time I went to the dentist, I got to pick what flavour tooth polish I wanted, and I got a prize at the end of my visit. This time: no watermelon toothpaste! No toothbrush-shaped pencil eraser! And what do I get instead? A cavity, that�s what. Fie!

The visit didn�t start off encouragingly: the first-time patient questionnaire posed the disconcerting question, �Do you become nervous during dental appointments?� �Should I?� I almost wrote, before remembering the time-honoured adage, �Never taunt the guy who is about to have your face in a vice grip.�

The cleaning went smoothly enough, though it did reinforce my irrational dislike of having pointy metal implements inserted in my mouth when they do not have pie attached to them. I passed the time contemplating a drawing pinned to the wall, presumably executed by one of the dentist�s offspring: it featured an outspread hand with two black fingers and a black circle in the middle of the palm, beneath a gold crown and something that looked like a pyramid. I hope my dentist knows that his sweet little Lisa is a Freemason. Weird.

Anyway, the painstaking archeological scraping of ten years� worth of gunge off my teeth revealed a cavity; so I got to go through the unexpected fun of having anesthetic stabbed into my face, my mouth cranked open with a car jack, and holes bored into my jaw with an electric drill. And since then, of course, I haven�t been able to feel the left side of my face. Although it�s empirically interesting to experience a total sensate disconnect from my own lips, the novelty is wearing off a lot more quickly than the Novocain.