The One... The Only... The Vieve

Dentist appointment of DOOM

I hate the dentist. When I was 10, there was a long stretch of almost-weekly dentist appointments -- five baby teeth pulled (they wouldn't fall out on their own for some reason), a raft of fillings, who knows what else. It sucked, and ever since then, at least a whiff of anxiety hovers around every trip to the dentist. My teeth have been fairly healthy for a long time now, except for the occasional filling (a word of advice to anyone thinking of skipping the dentist for 4+ years: don't). But at my semiannual cleaning last week, the dentist told me I had to have three fillings replaced.

OK, I thought, that's not so bad. The fillings are probably 20 years old, this was bound to happen soon. So I went back yesterday, thinking maybe I'd get them all taken care of at once, no big deal.

I thought wrong. So, so wrong.

She numbed a spot in my mouth, shot me with some novocaine, a little ouchy, OK fine. My tongue started to get numb. However, and this is important, my lip did not get numb, not at all. She started drilling, and it was kind of uncomfortable. Not really painful, but I seemed to feel it more than I should. She stopped and asked me if my lip was numb. "Uh...nuh. Nah rehy." "Oh, well, it should kick in soon," she said, and continued drilling. Until she hit a nerve. At which point I screamed and almost shot out of the chair. (But luckily I didn't move my head because, as she comfortingly told me, the drill would have cut my mouth to ribbons. Super.)

She apologized up and down, and I gripped the vinyl chair of dental doom and took deep breaths and tried to keep myself from freaking out utterly. She gave me a shot of lidocaine, the whole lower left quarter of my face went completely numb, and she finished up the job while I listened to Squirrel Cop to distract me. (It worked, a little.)

I go back in a month, which might be enough time for me to score some Valium.

Posted by thevieve at January 20, 2006 8:54 AM