There is a line from the movie Fight Club that I have always loved- With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels. Now, with a mouth full of shiny dentistry tools, and two people peering intently into my mouth, I think I should create a similar phrase. With a mouthful of dentist tools, you think only in absolutes? No, bad enough that I’m ripping off Fight Club, I shouldn’t plagiarize one of the more terrible Star Wars movies as well. With a mouth full of dentistry tools, the only valid philosophy is stoicism? Better, but I am not feeling at all stoic. With a mouthful of dentistry tools, you can only think deeply about your credit card debt? Not quite, clearly, I will not be the next Chuck Palahniuk. Fuck it.
Rewind. Sitting in the reception area, waiting for my appointment, reading my paperback (Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad), and trying not to keep glancing up at the flawless receptionist. I’m still recovering from a near-miss at work, where for a few seconds I thought my passengers and I were going to die. I spent an hour after work sitting at home, but relaxing between something like that and a dentist appointment is not feasible for me.
I’ll never take you to the one reserve in town where I know a small colony of Boronia megastigma grows. I would have led you to them blindfolded, asked you to inhale deeply the most amazing smell in nature, and then shown you the unassuming flowers that produce it.
Barely out of high school, I went to our local hospital to get two wisdom teeth extracted. I remember waking up post-surgery, a nurse confused as to why another nurse bandaged up both sides of my mouth when only the left side was operated on. Fast forward almost thirty years and the two remaining wisdom teeth need fillings. I should consider myself lucky that after five years of absence from the dentist chair, that’s all I need done. Blame COVID, blame my former dentist for canceling an appointment and then ghosting me. Blame the ongoing financial strain from owning my own home. When I found myself opposite one of my town’s newest dentist clinics, waiting for my coworker to conduct a Dial Before You Dig search, I knew what I had to do.
You will never see me entirely at ease, talking to volunteers at an event, or school kids at a planting day, as comfortable as you were working with children at your work.
Logically I am fine with dentists. Sub-consciously it is a mess. My tongue wants to go wherever the tools are poked (not sure what that says about my kissing ability) and my lips severely object to anything not food or drink-related trying to pass them. This started getting worse when I stopped getting lollypops from the school dentist.
I’ll never bring you an Americano, straight from my machine in my kitchen, in bed and an espresso for myself, so we can wake up together, cuddle, and plan what to do with the day.
The procedure begins with a lot of poking and prodding as if they didn’t decide two weeks ago what was needed. Then the numbing spray, then the needles into each gum. Then the fun begins. The drill comes out to clean out the decay, and what I feel is not so much pain as a deep unpleasant scraping and vibration that feels like it gets right to my skeleton. Next is polishing so the filling material has a nice clean surface to bond to. A plastic divider is shoved into my mouth, then the filling material is sprayed/injected/poured onto my remaining wisdom teeth. Something that looked suspiciously like a microchip is also added. An LED tool is used to quickly set the fillings, which makes my mouth uncomfortably hot for a few seconds, reminding me that not all my mouth has been numbed. Finally, they make me bite down on some paper to check my bite alignment and then fine-tune the fillings, and I’m sent on my way after a rinse, where I pretend not to notice that I can barely spit and mostly dribble water out of my mouth.
You will never ask me why I wave at people doing traffic management when I drive, and I’ll never explain to you the simple, undemanding camaraderie between people working in High-Vis in Australia, reinforced by attending the same training courses, driving similar vehicles, and similar working conditions.
My much-lauded private health insurance covers less than a third of the bill, and I attempt to look nonchalant as the goddess charges the gap to my credit card.
Adrian's Got The Moose 