It's that one day every six months when everything is supposed to taste like blood. Or in my case every four years. Yesiree, that's how long it's been since my last dentist visit. It's a pattern. You see, I'm blessed, or perhaps cursed with a mouth chemistry that suppresses decay. I've got two speck-sized fillings from when I was 15, and that's it. And let me tell you, the lack of precious metals in my mouth isn't for lack of trying buster. I have a flossing problem. Which is to say: I don't. Okay, well maybe once every couple months or so. I have my 'reasons'--laziness, always running late, bad technique, naturally rosy breath, etc. And what it boils down to, is that by the time 6 months have passed, I get the shame complex that I haven't started flossing regularly since my last visit when I was scolded and chided for not sawing string daily. So I tell myself I need to get at least a good month of daily floss under my belt before I can face the hygienist again. It doesn't come to pass, and 3 or 4 failed attempts later, it's 2004 and I've got one big mortar-tooth on top and one on bottom. So I just suck it up and prepare to take my lumps.
And the funniest thing happened. The hygienist told me, as she began pincushioning me, that it looked to her like if I made it in for a cleaning every six months, I could probably even get by without flossing. I just about did a huge Monty Python double-take at her, but the fear of having a cleft sliced in my tongue kept me still. And I bet she immediately started cursing herself for having let such heresy pass her lips.
And then the pain began.
Four years of plaque makes for a huge backlog of pent up wounding. I couldn't find my 'happy place' no matter how I tried. Perhaps it was the shock of her revelation echoing through my mind that kept the void from even forming. And it's funny now, how I thought the curly stabber things hurt...hahah. Because then she dragged out this device I had never seen before. She called it an 'ultrasonic scaler' but it was also known as the Zoltrazon or something like that, and said it would help get off the really stubborn bits. Cool. Ultrasound, that can't help but be good for me I thought.
Then she fired it up and jimmied it up under my gums, and that happy scene I had almost begun to form in the respite between tool changings turned into a scene filled with fire and explosions and wailing forest creatures. Oh the scintillating pain. And the sound...the sound...it changed hundreds of octaves in fractions of a second as it ground into each individually shaped nodule and crevice on the roots of my teeth. You know that episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan's fillings got knocked together, and the radio would play through his skull? Well it was kind of like that, except it was all the radio stations in the whole world screeching into my brain at once. It's apparently a sound meant only for the recipient, because at one point as a particularly strong stream of tears sprayed the spotlight she said, "Oh! Am I hitting a sensitive spot?" And I wanted to scream "For the love of all the dying kittens in the world can't you HEAR that???" But, as my mouth was full of hands and inquisition tools, I just pointed at my ears while my eyes rolled around backward. "Oh, sometimes that sound will go right up through the upper jaw and into the ear." It's so nice when people understand.
But that cinches it. Good floss habits or not, I'll be nipping that in the bud 6 months from now. Just please, please, don't use the Zorgotron on me again.
But my teeth are pearly now. Pearly yellow, but pearly nonetheless.
Leave a comment