"Oh, I can feel you are tensing up when I get around this area," the dental hygienist says, poking the gum around my front tooth. "Don't worry, the crown won't fall off." I resist the urge to reach up, snatch his metal torture sticks out of his hands, grab the front of his shirt and yell, "Well stop touching it then, little man! YOU know my dental history! YOU should know how I feel about this! GET. AWAY. FROM. THERE." Then I shoot him in the eye with his little water sprayer and shove the air sucker up his nose.
I instead make a non-committal noise, as his hands are still stuffed in my mouth, and close my eyes. I may have slight PTSD from previous dental experiences. But there have been far too many of them for me to escape without developing some sort of irrational fear. It all started with a surgery on the skin between my two front teeth when I was in middle school. I had to miss school for a few days while my mouth was healing and I was on pain medication. I cuddled with a purple teddy bear to get me through it. Then I had a root canal on a dying front tooth (which, if you don't know, is when they drill up into your tooth and take the nerve out. Not pleasant... and surprisingly bloody), then I got the crown on that same tooth. Then braces. Then I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and I think most people can agree that this is a crap-tastic experience.
Then, last summer, my dentist found out that three of my molars were decaying under the sealant that had been on there since I was a child, and I underwent four hours of cavity filling, in which I had to be re-numbed three times because one was so deep. Three. Goddamn. Times. This is something I would not wish on anyone, not even Justin Bieber, not even Rush Limbaugh... maybe. But that guy does deserve a massive wedgie at the least. Anyways, I am laying in the chair having to deal with a deep vibration coming from the drilling tool; it is uncomfortably rattling my brain around so that I have to close my eyes because they might jiggle right out of their sockets. Then suddenly a shooting, electric, overwhelming pain zaps through my whole body from my tooth and I flinch horribly... and that is the moment when I think, "No wonder so many people died from tooth problems before there were anesthetics! I would rather die than let someone continue doing that." And this happened THREE TIMES. By the end of it I was so tense, bracing myself for another Zap of Horror, that I had fingernail marks in my palms and I was sweating from how fast my heart was racing. Just when I would start believing that the anesthetic was actually working and start to relax a little bit, ZING! "DON'T GET TO COMFORTABLE," the pain was screaming at me, "BECAUSE I WILL RUIN YOU WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT." It nearly did.
But the reason I cannot stand someone messing around with my crown is because that tooth stars in some of my worst nightmares. I have had horrendous dreams about my front tooth falling out. In middle school a kid smacked my tooth with his elbow in volleyball and consequentially murdered it. The root canal done afterwards couldn't save it from turning a sickening grey color, so in the summer before my senior year of high school it was decided that I would get a crown.
This didn't seem so bad at first; they took a mold of my real tooth so they could have a model to build my new one from before they drilled my front tooth down to a stub. Then they placed a slightly rubbery, fake tooth around the stub, which looked pretty much like my real tooth, to temporarily hold the spot where my real crown would be while they constructed it. It took about two weeks to make the smooth, beautiful crown that would look exactly like my real tooth and stick there (hopefully) forever. But those two weeks in between were HELL.
The first time the fake tooth fell out, I cried hysterically and shut myself in my room, because I had made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror and learned to NEVER, under ANY circumstances, look at my tooth stub again. "I'M HIDEOUSSS!" I screamed to my mom through the door, but the missing toothy parts made me have a slight hiss when I spoke. "I look like a HILLBILLY!" It was truly a scarring experience, and though I imagine my mom was laughing on the inside, she kept it cool in front of me. The image of my face in the mirror with the tiny tooth stub is still burned into my memory like a sunspot... I can almost see the hay sticking out of my hair and the denim overalls as I ride a cow to pick up the newspaper.
The second time it fell out, I was working my shift at the local Dairy Queen. I was horrified. I felt it coming loose while I was making someone a blizzard. No no no no, not here! Not now! Not in the peanut butter cups! But I knew it would be falling out at any moment, so I frantically rushed to my purse, grabbed my retainer and shoved it into my mouth. Thankfully it held the fake tooth in place long enough for me to finish my shift and barge into the dentists office for a second time, demanding a new tooth-stub cover with a slight tone of hysteria.
It fell out one more time before I got my final crown put on. This time when I went to the office to get a third temporary tooth, I was on the verge of tears and of going slightly crazy. I felt constantly paranoid and twitchy and was careful not to eat ANYTHING that would disrupt it, sure that it would fall out at any time and I would be left looking like a freak yet again. "WHERE'S YOUR COW?" I could hear townspeople yelling already, "DID IT GET LOST IN THE COTTONSEED? OR DID YOU KILL IT FOR IT'S HIDE?" Stupid townspeople, cows don't play in cottonseed, GROW UP. There is only so much time I can spend looking like a hillbilly, and I had exceeded my life limit in those two weeks.
When I finally got my crown put on, I was cautiously relieved. As the days went on I realized that this tooth was here to stay, and I slowly became more confident that it wouldn't be popping out at any random time. This tooth is a BAMF, this tooth has my back, this tooth will not desert me! But since that time I have had dreams where I am thrown into a state of panic as I feel my tooth fall out and I wake up clutching my mouth in horror.
So YEAH, Mr. Dental Hygienist, even though you are probably totally correct in your assessment that I have nothing to worry about in regards to my crown jumping ship, I can't help but be completely and irrationally paranoid when you go poking around my cure for hillbillyism. Just leave it alone! It's doing a great job; I'm so proud of it that I just sucked my lips inside of my mouth to give it a backwards kiss. It's not every day someone gets one of those! Well done, tooth!
lol wonderful as always ash... that was hilarious.
ReplyDelete