Warming Up

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I think my dentist might read my blog. I went in for my fillings today and she asked how things had been with the hygienist. I told her that I had been really impressed and that she’d helped me learn how to clean my teeth properly. The dentist said that some people feel that they might be being treated like children. I said, no, not really. But commented on the purple food dye being like a childhood experiment. 

But of course, in my blog, which no one should take very seriously as I am mining my life for laughs and not always 100% honest about my feelings, I had said that I had felt like I was six years old. But I actually meant that as a criticism of myself. I was 50 and just learning that I was brushing my teeth wrong and not even really brushing the front ones. 

I did say lots of nice things too (along with questioning the necessity of hygienists , whilst perversely claiming I wanted a private one), but I wonder if this line of questioning came from them having realised who I was and then seeing I’d written about them. I still imagine that only one in a thousand people might be vaguely aware of me and that I am writing this in a vacuum. Obviously I didn’t name the dentist in my blog so I thought I was safe.

But then I realised that in the previous entry I had suggested (in jest of course) that the four fillings I was about to receive might not be necessary and that the dentist was using my old mouth as a cash cow to pay for jewel-encrusted tooth scrapers. So if she had read that and taken me seriously, given she was about to drill into my face bones…. that might not be for the best.

And as if to prove my point things were about to go a bit Marathon Man. As we settled into the chair, I said how brilliant the hygienist had been and how she hadn’t hurt me like some hygienists can as they jangle your nerves and that I preferred having fillings to having my teeth cleaned in that way. “Well, we’ll see about that,” the dentist didn’t quite say. I was all ready to have my face numbed up and have a definite blog about drinking liquid and it spilling down my face, but she looked at the chart and said, “I don’t think we need to give you an injection for these.”

Seriously. You don’t give fillings without some kind of gas or anaesthetic, do you? You have to drill into people’s teeth. That hurts. She was drilling into four of mine. And I’d just said how I didn’t like to have my nerves jangled by a mildly rough hygienist…. Obviously I would only suggest that a dentist would punish a cheeky comedian by going back to medieval tooth practices as a joke… but it all adds up.

I trusted her and let her continue without the injection, inspire of my aversion to being in pain. And fair play to her, it did hurt quite a bit. Obviously. “You can have the injection if you like,” she said, “I just don’t think it’s really necessary.” She knew she was testing my resolve and my very masculinity. Apparently most people can cope with having their living teeth drilled into without any pain relief, so I had to pretend that I could too. All the time thinking, “There’s another three teeth after this.”

And I am pretty sure she slipped in a fifth one too, as after the second one I said, “So there’s two to go then?” and she said, “No, three.”

I thought the final one wasn’t going to hurt at all and vindicate her decision, but she spent ages on it, and in the end it hurt the most. I kept thinking that this will be over in a second and the seconds kept going by.

But I barely cried and kept my cool and the dentist realised she had a worthy opponent and was surprised that I had coped so well. She was clearly making plans to punish me even harder next time if I made any suggestion of her acting unprofessionally. That’s definitely what she was doing. So to put her mind at rest and to save me the exquisite pain and pleasure of being tortured, I will just say that I have only ever been joking and that this dentist is above reproach and I promise to keep saying that as long as she promises not to hurt me again.

The dentist I go to is really good. And so is they hygienist. Now it sounds like I am saying to avoid being hurt. But it's true.

Plus I took more free toothpaste from reception, so I am still the winner.

But, I mean, how tough am I? Pretty fucking tough is the answer.

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