Tired of My Tooth

I had to go to the dentist this morning to get a filling. Look away if you're squeamish about descriptions of dental procedures because mine was a doozy. I had a cavity on the side of a molar. It was a small cavity, yes, but it ran between two teeth and up under the gumline and...having a filling put in there was awful. To drill out the cavity, the dentist had to manually pull the gums away from the tooth, which made a bloody awful mess.



That was me, pre-dentist. I took this crappy cell phone self-portrait in the dentist's bathroom just before my appointment. (From this photo on it's like the de-evolution of my smile. My teeth get better as I become more miserable.)

I like to kill time by taking crappy cell phone photos while the dentist and her assistant are out of the room. The lollipop looking stick coming out of my mouth is one of those long-handled Q-tips slathered with a pre-lidocaine anaesthetic, the stuff the dentist rubbed on my gums to make the lidocaine shots--eleven of them by the time we were done--a little less painful.



So that's me in the chair. (Not the most flattering shot, no? But I still look kind of happy, right? Because my appointment was so early in the a.m. and since I spend most of my time in the dentist's chair with my eyes closed, I didn't bother to put in my contacts. And because this particular dentist is not so careful about where she points the sprayer when she rinses away the blood, I often have to wipe my face with that corny little blue bib they put on me, so I didn't bother with makeup either.)

Here here is a dazed me just after the cavity was drilled out and the filling was put in, an hour-long process:



De-evolution of my smile complete. This is me very definitely not smiling. I took this photo while I was waiting for the dentist to come back in and file down the filling. The whole left side of my face was numb from the bridge of my nose to the middle of my chin. My left sinus was so numb that I was sure I was unable to breathe through my left nostril. (To convince myself that that wasn't true, I had to reach up and pinch my right nostril closed and breathe only through my left nostril, the numb one.) Yes, I was eleven lidocaine shots worth of numb, but the dentist hadn't numbed the gums closest to my tounge, which are the gums she tore apart working on my tooth. (She explained that the nerves in the tooth would be numb, but numbing the gum completely would mean shots into my palate, which she is reluctant to do for a minor procedure like a filling.) Because of that, having the filling filed down and scraped away was...not a pleasant experience. The filling runs between two teeth and under the gum and the dental power tools were too large to get into that space, so the dentist had to scrape it down with smaller hand tools and a not insignificant amount of muscle.

My gums hate me now.

After the dentist, I felt very disassociated from reality, so naturally I went shopping. I went to Target. (It's near my dentist's office.) I called Dave on the phone (I barely remember doing it) and told him about my appointment while I looked at the trendy, stupidly large earrings. I remember calling him, but I have no recollection of what I told him, except that I was looking at stupidly large earrings. After I hung up and went over to the Starbuck's counter and got a tall soy latte and sipped it while I wandered around in a daze for about an hour, looking at handbags and earrings and exercise wear and books and...stuff. I just dazedly looked at stuff. I left, I think, with four things: A chocolate brownie Clif Bar, an empty spray bottle, some Downy wrinkle-release spray for Dave, and something else. What? I don't remember. Let me look at my reciept. Oh yes, I also bought some lotion. Jergens Ultra Healing or something.

I just remembered:

Have you ever read that story about the woman who goes to the dentist by--was it Flannery O'Connor? No. It was a Shirley Jackson story where a woman goes into the city by herself, sans children or husband, for a dentist appointment. She's drugged up and very dazed after the appointment and, feeling sick, she goes into a department store to use the bathroom. When she leaves, still sick and drugged and dazed, she leaves her purse in the bathroom so she suddenly has no money or identification. It's classic Jackson, a perfectly ordinary woman in a perfectly ordinary situation is suddenly pushed into a strange and disquieting space--dreamlike, nearly nightmarish--that clearly she will not easily escape from. Seems like only so much fiction until you're suddenly wandering around Target in a post-dental appointment daze.

Ah, thank you, internet. The Jackson story is called "The Tooth." Here's a bit of it:

Her tooth, which had brought her here unerringly, seemed now the only part of her to have any identity. It seemed to have had its picture taken without her; it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified; she was only its unwilling vehicle, and only as such was she of interest to the dentist and the nurse...

"They'll take that tooth out," the dentist said testily, turning away. "Should have been done years ago."

I've stayed too long, she thought, he's tired of my tooth.