Monday, February 19, 2001

 

12:09 a.m. Howdy Hi! Howdy ho! Still alive, I tell you -- still alive. Upright, typing, even.

Today was a much easier return visit to the dental chamber than the first time. It's true that I worried about it a little, ok -- maybe more than that. Maybe I thought about it like a black bubble over Monday and maybe I mostly put it out of my mind.

Mostly. I know how bad it is to worry about something ahead of time ... something you can't change ... something that may not be as bad as the worry suggests.

So, what I try to do is to totally block the thought when it comes in, rather than try to reason with it. Just perform a short-circuit: "Was I thinking about the dentist?" No. Don't even know what the word means. No thought there.

Anyway, whether I block the thought or linger over it like a tongue worrying a broken tooth, time still conveyer-belts me right up to the dentist's door at the appointed time. And I marched on through, as we all must.

I thought today was going to be the last of two visits before I start the more normal routine of clean and cavity-filling, but in fact, today was number two of four visits. I misunderstood the process slightly. Today was the second of the root-canal fun stuff, and the two-part crown stuff comes next. Oh.

So I sit down in the chair perfectly pain-free and in just moments I'm all numb and in pre-pain again. But this is what you do if you're a cool American living in the twenty-first century. You open your mouth and you bite down.

The whole time, of course, you think about how the earlier peoples must have felt when confronted with the ache. Before needles, you know. Must have been ... tingly.

And then you think about what might happen if you swallow one of those cotton tubes and yet your mouth is numb and you're in a prone position ... and then you think about alien abduction and that scene in the Godfather, the novel, and then you think, of course, about Marathon Man.

Today I didn't have the nitrous drug -- didn't want to spend the money. Instead, I meditated and watched my hands shake slightly and tried not to let my mind wander and by the time I did a monkey circuit, I was back to my hands and they were no longer shaking. Power of the mind.

So today the doctor took out the rest of the infection, and then they put a sort of rebar arrangement of rubber strands into the place where the nerve used to be and then they -- I'm not making this up: remember, I had no drugs -- then they actually burn the ends of the rubber to make it expand and fill the space and believe you me, it's no picnic asking what's going on with huge wads of cotton under and around your tongue.

And that mad alive sucker thing, wetly slurping and hanging from your increasingly dryer and dryer lips.

I really really really hope this is the only one of these little adventures I will have to have. One of these is good for a topic -- and I'm awfully glad to have a topic.

On Wednesday I go back for the first part of building the crown. That gives me just one day -- tomorrow -- to get over the fear of today's visit and to worry about tomorrow's visit. That's a crowded schedule for a worrier, but I'll do my best.

Now it's time for my analgesic.