It’s Tuesday and I’m in the dentist office. Not the cozy little personal dentist office I went to as a kid, but the kind of dental office that resembles a conveyer belt. Far too white-looking teeth are on the walls everywhere. Horrifying videos about cosmetic dentistry and life-threatening gum disease flash on plasma TV screens around the dental office. I wait for my fillings thinking, “Noooo problem. I’m an old pro at this.”

Several years ago when I was living in Germany and eating more candy and chocolate (and being handed more stuffed animals than a hospitalized child) I noticed that my front left tooth—the one next to the big center teeth—was turning a slightly darker shade on one side. I figured it was all the ham hoxels and coffee or something--- but the shadow grew. With great trepidation I realized I was getting a cavity and being in the Black Forest in the middle of nowhere was not exactly conducive to a trip to the dentist. Up until the moment I went to the dentist upon my return from Germany I had never had a cavity in my life.

And then all hell broke loose. Not only did I have a cavity in that front tooth (A FRONT TOOTH?! SICK!) I had about four more. Not only did I need to get a filling in that front tooth, in order to get the filling I had to have gum surgery and root canal therapy too.

Call me crazy but the word “therapy” I thought is supposed to connote something pleasant—a healing method, perhaps. Why someone used it to describe one of the world’s worst procedures is beyond me. Both popular culture and I take the position that root canals are one of the more ghastly things to receive. When I got mine the numbing faded halfway through the procedure so I literally felt the guy removing the nerve from my tooth—and wanted to then donate my entire head to science and leave it at that.

Having endured the root canal, the stitches in my gum that made me look like I’d actually flossed with real spiders and left their legs between my teeth, and the concurrent shots and fillings, I figured Tuesday would be a breeze.

Not so.

I finally get situated in the classic recliner chair wishing I could order myself one of those lead x-ray blankets because they’re heavy and warm and lovely when something square is being shoved into the roundness of your mouth. Before I know it the doctor has started going to town on my teeth telling me I’m getting an extra filling I didn’t realize I would receive.

Hey bonus, great.

Then the mentally vacant dental hygienist entered the room and startled me with the large black ink feathers sliding across her face from her eyelids. Immediately I wished for the sunny (almost too cheery) dental hygienist from my cleaning weeks prior. That woman could have made coffee beans sprout roses. This woman might make coffee beans sprout roses but only because she cast a spell on them and then scared the bean so witless it forgot what it was and had a rose erupt from its terrified center.

Seriously.

Forgetting where my mouth was the woman jabs the straw into my face—the skin, not the oral cavity—sucking my cheek clear of any debris it might have encountered since I washed it only about a half hour before. Instead of assisting the doctor she stares absently up at yet another plasma screen watching the faux dental procedures (which I can only assume she has seen several times) fade into one another while the dentist gives me three painful shots without any assistance. Finally she realizes my epidermis doesn’t need suctioning, bends the straw into a hook, and then dangles it down into my throat and leaves it there while she chews her gum and holds her hand out with gauze in it as if the doctor might spit his gum into the wad.

As this casual approach to whatever it is she’s supposed to be doing continues, I wait while the numbing fluid runs down the back of my cheek, down into my throat—numbing everything in its path. My lower esophagus feels like it has swollen up three sizes now and with the suction tube still grasping at my now shriveled dry tongue, I think I’m going to gag.

Instead of gagging the doctor accidentally drops the drill onto my lower teeth.

HOLY CRA---

“That’ll keep you awake, eh?”

Yes, I’m thinking. That and the fact that my tongue is now safely deposited in whatever machine is attached to the end of this tube while Queen High As A Kite here continues to chew her gum and look at all the utensils you’re supposed to be using on my mouth.

In my mind I shifted from that dentist chair to the homey dental office from my childhood. My dentist is in there talking softly, making sure nothing hurts (nothing ever did), making sure that his sweet, competent dental hygienist keeps my mouth both free of old spit and hydrated with mists of cool water. Granted, each time he tried to fix the chip on my tooth it fell off.

This time, however, this chip is NOT falling off. I know this because the guy plastered so much crap on my tooth I couldn’t bite down when he was finished and blood was flowing out of my mouth.

What th? I’ve never had blood accompany a filling.

Then I saw that he must have dropped the drill on my gums too because when the swelling went down a crimson lump around my tooth remained.

After I chattered that I couldn’t bite down properly, he gave me a mirror to give him more direction. I jumped when I saw my tooth even more than when I saw the hygienists’ eyes--- where the chip had been a very real-looking filling now remained. Only it was sagging off to the right so far down it looked like the chip had not only repaired itself, but had about three children dangling from its leg.

Uh…I said with my mouth as near to useless as possible in that numbed-up state…
Could you pweeze fwatten dat out a wittle bit mo? I said as lip floundered on its own. It seemed to have taken up some form of interpretive dance.

“Oh yeah, I see what you mean,” he said.

Well thank God he isn’t blind, I thought.

Next the hygienist shoved me back down in the chair (whoa there girlfriend) and the dentist drilled away.

I can’t say any of it actually still feels like a tooth—but I can at least look as though I didn’t gnaw on the end of a steel pipe one day. And I can say it makes me appreciate the attentive dental worker in my own town—even if his work doesn’t always stay attached.