from the desk of stinkpot

this week has been full of long days.

i looked in the mirror on monday and saw stains on the edges of my teeth. these stains were both toothbrush and fingernail resistant. even worse, the stains were mildly conspicuous since they were on my front teeth. concerned, i asked christina if she had noticed them before.

“yea, you’ve had that for about a week. i thought you saw them when you smile at yourself in the mirror.”

i temporarily forgot about the teeth thing and thought about what chris was implying. either she thinks of me as being vain enough to constantly smile at myself, or that i’m simply indifferent about my appearance. or perhaps she somehow thinks both?

either way, i refocused and began to freak out. i might have cavities. that would be bad, since i hate seeing the dentist – i’ve successfully deferred an oral checkup for 3 years running. nevertheless, i decided that part of entering adulthood means you do things that you don’t like doing. such as seeing the guy who puts his fingers in your mouth for a living.

due to a last-minute cancellation, i was able to see a dentist just 3 hours later. instant dental gratification, you might call it. and, like so many things in life, there was good news and bad news. the good news: “those stains were probably due to coffee, tea, or soda.” relief! the bad news: “you’ve got a cavity.” angst!

apparently, it’s because i don’t floss. call me lazy or un-hygenic, but i don’t think it’s very fun to stick thread between my teeth until my gums bleed. then again, it’s also not very fun to have a cavity filled, i suppose.

actually, it wasn’t so bad. fate destined me to sort out my dental troubles quickly; someone cancelled there appointment today and i was able to see my dentist around noon.

things, thankfully, went swimmingly. dr. reid is a sweet middle-to-late aged man who hummed along to the music while he drilled holes in my tooth. i found it endearing that he also quietly apologized to me each time he bored a little deeper. here he is, performing probably his 5467th filling, and he’s still a little contrite.

to take my mind off of the dremmel rotating a couple thousand rpm and constantly passing by the soft tissue of my eyes and tongue, i spent most of the surgery reflecting on my anaesthesia. oddly enough, its injection was the most unpleasant part of the surgery. i swear that needle was poked so deeply into the roof of my mouth that i half expected it to pop out of my nose. just thinking about it again makes me cringe.

but, of course, i’d have bawled like a [insert noun here that's not those poor, cliched "babies" or "little girls"] had i not gotten my fixin’ of anaesthesia. what a stunning discovery anaesthesia was. internet, dishwashers, jello – i can imagine living in the sorry time when those inventions didn’t exist. but an age before anaesthetics? how uncivilized! being forced to see a surgeon must have been like a watered-down version of the death penalty. even minor surgeries, like my cavity filling, would have been, for lack of a better phrase, like pulling teeth. i can’t begin to imagine the horror.

hmm, the snappy finish i eagerly anticipated when i started this entry has failed to materialize. here’s the best i’ve got: “the only downside to anaesthesia is that it’s so difficult to spell correctly.” yuck, that was pretty weak sauce.

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