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Toothy
As of yesterday’s visit, I am a resolved Anti-Dentite.
Here ye, dentists: if a person with [relatively] healthy teeth comes in after having missed one six-month checkup, and you scold said person for her absence and accuse her of “see[ing] someone else” during that period, that patient will likely not come back to see you again.
Also, cuts in patient’s mouth from the sloppy hygienist are a negative, too. Also also, sloppy hygienist evidently likes to complain TO THE PATIENT about having to floss patient’s teeth with a threader rather than like “normal teeth”.
And unrelated to this particular dentist, I’m getting older now (keenly aware of my need for daily retinol) and I’m thinking just maybe all this violent pulling of my mouth with little regard for the fact that it’s attached to a face ain’t good for the skin situation.
So fuck you, teeth; I’m quitting the dentist.
(For now.)
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Pulling Teeth
When I was little, going to the dentist was scary until I realized it was another place where I could win. Win!
It was a pretty straightforward assignment: you go in and tell the receptionist you’re there (like a big girl), you chat with the hygienist about school, and then, the only difficult part, you gag and gag and gag through the x-rays and the fluoride treatment. “Would you like double mint or bubble gum, sweetheart?” “Um… could we just skip this part?” Fluoride DOES NOT taste like gum.
Still, “She’s doing just perfect, brushing great, and no surprise, still no cavities.”
Easy-peasy until I was fourteen, when all of a sudden I was the dentist’s black sheep: The Vigorous Brusher. Instead of accolades, I got accusations. “Why don’t you show me exactly how you brush, dear?” became “It looks like you’re brushing a little hard, sweetie” became “You really need to lighten up on the brushing”.
And I couldn’t reconcile those comments with what I’d been taught to do. How am the fuck am I supposed to clean these suckers if you won’t let me brush the hell out of them?
Then after the braces came off: “Are you flossing?”
Flossing? What?! Of course not; flossing is something Dad does for the first few weeks after he’s had a round of really bad tooth stuff. Flossing’s not for me, but thanks.
You can see where this is going.
One day Dr. Sorrentino showed me some gruesome photos of gum disease and its long-term affects, which is why he was able to scare me into the chair for surgery to repair a spot where you could basically see my skeleton where gums should be.
So about a month later, I rode the ferry to Staten Island, feeling pretty good knowing that I wouldn’t be going under like I did for the Quadruple Wisdomectomy of 2000.
But on the other hand, I knew, in graphic detail, what was about to happen — the doctor was going to transplant SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN onto my gum.
Then I was there, getting high on laughing gas (higher than I really liked at the time) and subsequently shot with novocaine. Five minutes of fiddling around with my gums felt like five hours. I was convinced that all the digging and poking and prodding and scraping and cutting I felt was all there was to it. It was over. I was sure that, Man, that had sucked, but at least we’re about to clean up shop here. Time to wipe up my drooly mouth and help a lady stand up.
And I must have said as much to the doctor, because I remember the non-response of “need more novocaine” from the eyebrows peering out at me between the face mask and fancy doctor hairnet, and then I really started to panic, and the nerves bubbled up in my stomach worse than ever before.
Because all that torture I’d just been through was the fucking novocaine injections. Multiple shots, to be fair, but JUST THE NOVOCAINE. The stuff that’s supposed to help.
We all resumed our duties: I tried not to scream through the pain; they tried to graft some new gum onto an area that desperately needed it.
But since doctors on Staten Island can’t perform their jobs without botching something, I’m still sporting some tooth skeleton, and I have an inordinate amount of gumminess on the two teeth to the left.
And why am I telling you this? Well, because I have a dentist appointment in T-17 days. And also so that every time you consider that maybe you’re too tired to floss before bed, you’ll think of my hideous mouth. Boo-hoo-hoo-wah!