Who's Your Dentist?

Last year I had an eensy-teensy-weensy procedure done on my heart. As I laid on the table, waiting to go under so the hole in my heart could be patched, a 20 something year-old guy, whose most serious life injury to this point was probably a cut he got shaving, leaned over and said, “Don’t worry. This isn’t as bad as the dentist.”

“Yeah,” I thought, “but the dentist doesn’t make you take off all your clothes and lie naked on a cold metal table.” That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up with drool running down the side of my face and a warm blanket on top of me and my husband holding my hand (he didn’t mind the drool. I think.) I went to Costco on my way home from the hospital and took pictures at a wedding the next day.

Flash forward to last month. I went to the dentist to get a crown which is just another word for expensive porcelain to cover your own crappy-looking, nonfunctional tooth that you did not floss. I took valium before I went to the dentist. When I asked my husband to drive me, he said, “You can do natural childbirth three times, but you can’t go to the dentist without valium??” “Exactly,” I said. “Drive.”

Although I walked into the dentist office like a drunk, the valium helped. Yes, I was aware that spit was flying all over my face, that broken parts of tooth were sliding down my throat and that my mouth was open so wide my eyes were going to pop out, I just couldn’t do anything about it because I was in a valium stupor. Yes I love that drug and yes I will be taking it next time I get my teeth cleaned. And if I were having another child, I would name him Valium.

However, I did not wake up with a warm blanket. First of all because I was already awake, and secondly because the dentist does not warm up blankets and make you all comfy. I did stagger out with spitty-huge-numb face. I did end up getting a big canker where I’d been nicked with something sharp which I did not feel at the time because I was not in my right mind or my left mind and had spitty-numb face. And eating, my favorite thing to do, was a chore for a week.

Trust me, the dentist, no matter how nice he seems, is not your friend. Who in their right mind would choose to spend the rest of their life sticking their hands in peoples’ mouths? I’ll tell you, the same type of person who becomes a proctologist. That’s who.