HOLY CRAP! What the hell is with my mouth?!?!
If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you will already know that I have some serious issues with having dental work done.
It’s not even that I’m scared of the sharp pointy, drilly, shock me to death tools…which by the way I totally am, just in case you were wondering.
It’s also that I have extra nerves in my mouth.
You know when you take something apart to see how it works or to ‘fix it’ and after putting it back together you realize you have like 10 screws left over?
You’ve totally done that, don’t even lie!
Anyway, the only logical explanation here is that one day God was taking his humans apart to ‘fix them’, and when he got to me he realized he had a bunch of nerves left over from the previous guys, so he threw them all in my teeth hoping no one would notice.
WELL I NOTICED GOD! I NOTICED!!!
Let me start a few weeks back just so you have the backstory on this whole situation.
I needed a root canal, because on top of nervy teeth, they also suck!
After some convincing from my co-workers, I decided to ask one of the endodontists at our office to do it for me.
I made an appointment for the following week and proceeded to start freaking out.
One day shortly after making the appointment, they had no-show and thought… ‘Hey! Kristy needs a root canal…let’s do her!’
Let me add…I had like FIVE MINUTES NOTICE!!!
Now the thing about our office is that they don’t sedate patients. I mean really, why would a patient need to be sedated when you are drilling into their big toe from their frigging mouth? Good God don’t be silly. A little freezing should do the trick. Save the sedation for big, scary things like fillings or something.
So there I was, about to face my greatest fear in life without my tiny little mind altering sleepy pill.
Just as a refresher about the root of my fear. I had the inside of my cheek accidentally sliced when getting brackets for my braces glued on when I was a child.
One would think GLUING something would not require any sharp instruments at all, but my orthodontist liked to live dangerously so used the sharpest damn thing he could find in his entire office to push the brackets onto my teeth.
This worked quite well until he lost focus and slipped.
SLIPPED! INSIDE MY DAMN MOUTH! WITH SHARPNESS!
I haven’t been the same since.
Add a lifetime of extra nerves to that (thanks big guy), and you’ve got a very healthy fear of dental work.
Ok back to my root canal.
I am one of those people who hate having something control me. I conquer my fears and force myself to face them no matter how terrified I am.
So I did. And proceeded to cry like a baby in front of one of my bosses and a co-worker.
It was a proud moment.
Ok so I didn’t exactly blubber or anything, but I did shake so hard that I finally realized why the chairs are bolted to the floor.
Also…and I’m not proud of this…but a single lone tear fell from my right eye (yes that was the very side the Dr was on so she was in full view of my pathetic-ness)
I remember sitting there thinking: ‘It’s ok, she knows what she’s doing, she’s done this a million times and I’ve never heard a patient scream from her room. Just breath. Oh my God what the hell is with my right eye getting wet. No! No don’t you even THINK of tearing up! Stop it you idiot! You’ll embarrass us! Get yourself together damn it and suck that tear right back into yourself! Suck it! Suck iiiitttt!!!’
Ignoring me completely, it proceeded to crest, quiver in the corner of my eye…then glide down my cheek without a care in the world about how dumb it made me look.
I couldn’t even wipe at it because my mouth was cranked open waaaaay further than humanly possible, aaaaand the doc had sharpness in my mouth, so there was no fu$king way I was moving a damn muscle at that point.
The doctor was all ‘Oh for God’s sake you’re getting my shoes wet ya big baby!’
She said it in her head, but I totally heard her because I’m a frigging mind reader, plus she shifted slightly in her chair so I know for sure she was wiping the wet toe of her shoe on the back of her pant leg.
Naturally, before she was done, I had to pee.
Unable to talk because the jaws of life were cranking my mouth open, I pointed to my crotch hopefully.
The dental assistant, who was a complete sweetheart and trying her best to keep me calm, looked confused for a second because it looked as if maybe I was trying to seduce them in the middle of getting a canyon drilled into my tooth.
Suddenly she grinned and asked if I went before the procedure.
I said, “Yes, but doc is scaring the pee out of me!”
It was said with my mouth wide open of course so it sounded more like, “Uah fagjo faldkfjljflgj”, but she totally knew what I was saying because she laughed at my wittiness.
They released me from my chair prison, which they really shouldn’t have done because I came damn close to bolting right out of the building. The only thing that stopped me was that I still had the blue rubbery thingy in my mouth so it might have looked kinda suspicious to the security guard downstairs who I’m sure was used to that kind of thing and had some kind of taser or something ready for such moments.
I was still considering it right up until I was washing my hands and decided to look at my tooth in the mirror.
Ok…so…here’s the thing.
Do NOT, under any circumstances, look into your tooth in the middle of a root canal!!!
It is scary as sh$t in there!
I immediately marched myself right back to that chair, and for the rest of the procedure did my absolute best to forget I ever saw what my stomach looked like through the crater in my tooth.
Now we get to the point where I have to have a crown put on to ‘keep the tooth from cracking’.
The problem was that I couldn’t get a Saturday appointment for a while and didn’t want to miss work by being sedated in the morning…and being sedated on a full stomach is not so much fun, so if I had been sedated in the afternoon I wouldn’t have been able to eat all day.
Screw that not eating crap.
In order not to miss a whole day of work, I decided to bravely face my fears and get the crown done with just freezing.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
My dentist is the sweetest thing in the world. She’s so kind and understanding and she makes you feel like she really cares. This is why I feel sooooo bad and I wish I could have stopped my sudden jerks of pain just to avoid making her feel bad.
She knows about my extra nerve, super-sonic-speed-dental-medication-metabolizing issue, so she immediately gave me extra freezing in anticipation.
Because of whatever was in the injection, my heart started racing and I shook so hard she actually stopped and looked at me in concern, completely sure I was trying to have a seizure or something.
Reassured that I was going to live, she continued to poke around in my mouth and started her little drill thingy.
Everything was going ok until I suddenly felt one of those dreaded shocks of pain that makes my entire body jerk spasmodically.
My doc calmly pulled the sharp stuff out of my mouth and inserted a 5 foot long needle again.
A couple times.
I’m actually not sure what I hate more; the shocks as the needle hits my oddly placed nerves on the way in, or the fact that I KNOW if I jerk too hard from the shocks that the needle will shoot out the back of my neck because it’s as long as a freaking knitting needle.
Anyway, she went back to work and half my head was frozen for like 5 minutes.
It really sucks when you start feeling your mouth WHILE the Dr has the pointy stuff in it and is drilling away happily.
JERK!
Doc sighs and pulls out again and inserts knitting needle.
Waits a minute then continues with the drill thing.
JERK!
“MOTHER OF GOD!!!” <— me, but she can’t understand me cuz my mouth is open as wide as possible for fear of biting down on the drilling thing and causing even more pain.
“DAMN IT WOMAN!” <– her (in her head).
Twelve foot long needle goes in.
I swear the needle gets longer each time she puts a new one in. I’m pretty sure she does it on purpose.
She informed me during yet another needle that some people just can’t be completely frozen sometimes. It’s like that particular nerve is immune or something.
Yay me 🙁
The torture continued for at least five hours and I’m damn sure I had every single muscle in my body tensed the entire time. I also lost count of mouth stabbings at the tenth needle.
My eyeballs were so tense the tears couldn’t even fall out.
And I swear I was planking the dental chair on my back the entire time.
I’m home now (obviously) and every single inch of my body hurts. It’s not only my mouth that’s throbbing (probably because of the fifty or so needles that were stabbed into it), but my muscles all ache from planking for an hour and a half straight. That’s gotta be good for at least 500 calories burned.
As I walked out I informed her that I would wait until they had a Saturday open so I could be sedated for the second crown that had to be done on the other side of my mouth. There was absolutely no bloody way I was going through that again.
She heartily agreed.
As much as I want to face my fears, I think each of the million painful shocks I receive while have dental treatment is actually making them worse. From now on…I think sleeping through them is a far saner thing to do…plus it fills my children’s lives with hilarity when they see mommy all drugged out on ‘silly medicine’.
I should probably start saving for their therapy from now.
Also, is it weird that I feel bad for making my dentist cause me so much pain?