Novocaine

There’s one thing about people’s logic that I can not understand.

We are not allowed to properly discipline our children anymore, touching strangers in public is generally frowned upon and hitting people are out.

Yet, we are more than happy to pay some dentist to torture us for everything from half an hour to an hour. I don’t understand that but then again, I don’t understand dentists and I really don’t like them.

I’ve had a pretty destructive week. I broke my car, broke my shower, broke one of my favourite cups and broke my tooth. In the tooth’s defence, it’s been begging to go. I’ve had trouble with it for almost a year. Every six months or so I suck it up and go to the dentist only to have myself told that I either need to get a nerve removed or there’s nothing wrong. I’ve stopped going since November last year, having decided just to tough it out. Thinking about it now, that’s probably the reason I can be pretty bad tempered at times.

This past week was no exception and I’ve really had to focus to keep my temper in general. The reason? Apart from my car that is, my sensitive tooth had become an aching tooth. It caught me off guard at night where I’d wake up from a sudden explosion in my mouth (I grind my teeth on a regular basis) and chewing anything harder than a cooked pea was painful. It reached a crescendo last night when I was having peas and potatoes (with mayonnaise and cheese… Yum). I was happily munching away at my first proper meal for the day when quite suddenly a shock ran through my mouth. I knew without a doubt, seconds after almost choking on my potatoes in pain, that I had broken something. At first, I thought it was the filling in said tooth but then as I rushed to the mirror and worked the hard bits out of my mouth I realized that it was in fact my tooth.

Dismay hit me like a rock because I knew that it meant I had to go to the dentist. There was no getting out if it this time, I had to go so that they could sort out the gaping hole in my gums.

I summed up my courage and went right after I’ve seen most of my clients for the day. I had to pay an emergency fee up front and then waited for almost two hours to be helped. When the dentist finally saw me, I was a wreck but I kept myself together even when I realized that he was preparing to give me a shot of novocaine. I’ve never found the sensation pleasant as it seems to have a bit of a delayed reaction in me. I’ve told this to my dentists countless times but they never listen. Once, one even drilled into my tooth live because he didn’t believe that I could still feel a thing. When I jumped up in pain, the nurse held me down. It was frightening and that experience is forever locked in my mind.

Today was no exception but luckily the dentist waited for the stuff to work properly before he started working on me. It wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. Because I can’t afford a crown, he decided to build up the tooth which didn’t take a lot of time but it was just enough to reduce me to a bundle of nerves. I was so tense (and suffering from facial paralysis thanks to the novocaine) by the time that I left his room that I couldn’t even take out my debit card from my purse to pay for the torture. The assistant made me sit down for several minutes before she came round with the bill again.

I’m not even embarrassed to admit it!

I don’t know what type of person becomes a dentist and the worst part is that we need them. I know with the certainty of a bitter cold that I will have to return within the next 6 months, either to take care of this same tooth or to deal with a different one.

It is not something I look forward to.