I have a problem. Well, more accurately, I have many problems. But for the purpose of this particular bloggie, I am going to address one particular problem of mine. A phobia: dentophobia. The fear of dentists. Though that description is a bit misleading. I don't have nightmares about dentists chasing me down the street with tiny hook-shaped metal toothpicks. It's really the sensations that accompany the dental work that scare the crap out of me.
I'm not just talking about the pain of a pair of pliers bearing down on a molar. Although we could certainly discuss that. But there's a whole assortment of sensory input to make me cringe. Let me paint you a picture.
First, the waiting room. A pleasant enough sitting area, television playing morning talk shows. 5 healthy, delicious summer grilling tips coming up after the break!
All I can think about is how my name will be called soon, and the horror will really begin.
Sure enough. "Jamie?"
I follow a chirpy five foot tall woman into the x-ray area. She hands me a fashionable, but heavy, vest to wear for the occasion. I guess I was supposed to dress up for my appointment.
"Step through here, please. Watch your head." She guides me into a wraparound machine. I stand inside looking through a frame. "Place your chin on this here, and bite down on this. Hold still. It might help to close your eyes."
The whole contraption spins around me while making a whirring sound for about two hours as my jaw threatens to seize due to the prolonged clenched state. Somewhere downstate, a full size 3D scan of me is loaded into a database with a red flag. I've been tagged! I'm in the system!
Next, she takes me into another x-ray room where, this time, I need to bite down on a square of sandpaper-like knife sharpening stone. This is connected to a magnifier targeting apparatus that sticks out of my mouth a good twelve inches. The weight of the junk hanging outside of my clenched teeth makes the sharpening stone corners dig into the roof of my mouth. This is not nearly as pleasant as it sounds. We only need to do this for the next four hours, fortunately. One hour for each corner of my mouth.
Then she takes my new vest back and leads me into another room. I guess this other part of the office isn't so formal.
She points me to a fancy chair complete with leg rest, head rest, arm rests, and personal tv. My blood runs cold. This is the chair where happy thoughts come to die.
I am led to that deceivingly comfortable reclining chair. It slyly attempts to get me to relax. No sir. No relaxing here. Not even with Bob Ross on that swiveling 17" screen talking about happy little trees. From here, I can hear the high pitched whine of a Dremel drilling for oil in some poor soul's mouth nearby. From this perfectly cushioned chair of doom, I can hear the slurping of a drool sucker, like a child rooting around at the bottom of his cup trying to get every last drop of chocolate milk with the straw. From this blissfully reclining throne of the condemned, I listen to the helpless moaning of a tortured prisoner just on the other side of the curtain.
And then the dental hygienist walks in. She is deceptively friendly. Don't let down your guard, though. She comes bearing weapons. She casually plops a plastic baggie of long, skinny, metal devices of torture onto a swivel tray. There's a tiny javelin, a tiny version of Captain Hook's hook, and a tiny circular mirror with a long handle (actually, I've always wanted one of those). She tosses these instruments of torment onto the tray, then walks behind my chair and out of sight. Leaving me to stare at the malevolent mechanisms as my twisted brain comes up with several ways they can be used to make me cry uncle.
Then he enters. The dentist. Tall, thin, ridiculously long fingers, dark and beady eyes. He has some sort of thick accent, at times hard to understand.
"I've seen your x-rays, and it looks like we'll have to pull that tooth."
Was he smiling behind that paper mask? I swear he was smiling as he began to describe how he was about to inflict ruin upon my mouth. What kind of person smiles as they're handing out your sentencing? A madman, that's who.
And his eyes... did they flicker for a moment? It looked like his pupils flattened out for just an instant. Who can tell? Your senses reel when you are in a panic state. The mind plays tricks.
"Let's open up, see what we're dealing with here." Again, I swear he's smiling under that mask!
I tentatively open my mouth, and he hooks his fingers around my lips and stretches them wider. After a bit of poking around, accompanied by some grunts and "hmmm"s, he reaches to the swivel tray for that plastic baggie of tricks. He pulls out the hook. Without a word, he brings it towards my mouth. I instinctively pull back, trying to sink deeper into the chair. I swear that his smile widens under that mask.
"I'm going to need you to sit still and relax."
Relax! Ha! When he wants to stick me with that hook?!
As he stabs all the sensitive bits, flaring pain in several different locations, my whole body stiffens up, muscles clenched.
"Yeah, that tooth right there," he taps on it, painfully, "that's going to have to come out." He pushes on it once more, for good measure, sending an electric shock outward from the tooth up to my temple and down the back of my neck. I let out an involuntary grunt of pain. And there was that twinkle in his eye again, pupil flattening out strangely for a brief moment. Am I really seeing that? Or is the pain making me hallucinate?
I know that I have an irrational fear of going to the dentist. And I know that it's not all that uncommon a fear. But now I'm finding that there's a new dimension to my fear. This guy is too surreal. His eyes... Can I really just call it a hallucination? What is really happening here? Who, or what, is my dentist?
He rolled his chair back a foot or so, dropped his utensils on the tray with a metallic clink, stood up, and abruptly walked out without another word.
The cheerful hygienist appears out of nowhere and tells me that I can now follow her to the waiting area, where I will be called upon to discuss payment options.
This is a different kind of pain. First, they hit you in the mouth. Next, they hit you in the pocket.
"Oh, we're in luck! It looks like we accept your insurance! Alright, let's see here..." She taps away on her keyboard for a good forty five minutes. Then she begins to lay it all out for me.
"So. We have today's consultation. We have the x-rays, your entry into the government's database, and the GPS tracker we snuck in there. Don't worry, that last service is at no cost to you! And... it appears that the doctor wants to do an extraction."
"A heads up: I'm a big baby about all of this. Is there a way you can just knock me out for that part?"
"Certainly! It does cost a hair more, but that is absolutely an avenue we can explore."
"How much more?"
"About $8,000. But we can look at financing. And we'll have to take a look at the oral surgeon's calendar. He comes up twice a year for just that sort of thing. Hmmm... oh! What luck! It looks like he'll be available in July, 2023! Does the 17th work for you?"
"Well, I mean this tooth is really killing me. Like right now."
"Right. Well... we can stuff your mouth full of cotton and yank that sucker out with some vice grips on Friday, if you'd like it out earlier."
"Nothing in between those options, huh?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
"I see."
With patience, she sits quietly on the other side of the desk as I ponder my many options.
"Alright. I guess we can take care of this on Friday."
"Excellent! Let's get everything scheduled!"
And so now I wait. Three days. In the meantime, I can't sleep from the pain. I have this trick where I have a sip of ice water that I swish around on that side of my mouth. At first, it causes a stabbing pain, but after a few seconds it numbs the pain down to about 10%. For almost 5 minutes. Which is a pain in the butt when I'm out and about doing my thing. If I'm too far from my water bottle, the pain creeps back. Slowly at first. But then it builds to a point where my jaw starts to tremble and my brain starts shutting down all non-essential activities. I'm in utter agony until I can cool down the fire with a sip and a swish.
At night though... oh man! I haven't slept for 3 days! I am wiped out from exhaustion, but then theq pain wakes me up again not three minutes later if I do conk out. So I sit up, take a sip, wait for the agony to subside, then lie back down again. Only to do it again three minutes later. So I never actually get to sleep. Three nights in a row like that now, and I think I'm going insane. Despite my fear of the dentist (alien or not), I can't wait to get this damn tooth out of my head!
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