Decadent Dentistry, part 3

Eight hours later, my cheek still waxes numb against my teeth, though not to the rotted degree it had when I shot up with the A.A. special (anesthetic. Yeah, he's going to be knocking people out. Don't call it a comeback.). This was me making my return to the dentist in order to hollow out my poor tooth and get a cyanide pill/filling implanted. Ever seen the movie "Dune" from 1984? Yeah, just call me Yueh. Wellington Yueh.

I rushed down during lunch time. Got some McNuggets right before. Why? I don't know, probably because I knew it would be a long time before I could eat again. That, and I need a lot of grease in my life. Yet, oddly enough, I didn't ocnsider the possibility that it might get stuck in my teeth, right before they're about to drill dead tissue from my tooth.

M.B. was my dental nurse. Boy, do I now (in crystal-clear retrospect) feel sorry for her. As the good Doctor applied the topical anesthetic, then injected my gums with the local anesthetic, M.B. and I discussed the nature of nerves.

M.B.: I remember one patient. You know how teeth are supposed to be nerve to tooth, nerve to tooth, nerve to tooth? Well, her nerves were all crossed across each other. We had to numb her entire mouth just to put a filling in on her right side.
K.T.: Wow, that must have sucked.
M.B.: Well, it meant that she had a lot of nerves, so she would feel a lot of pleasure everywhere.
K.T.: I was thinking that if she got hit, she would feel a lot more pain.
M.B.: Yeah, if she got hit, she would feel a lot more pain.
K.T.: But if she got "hit," she would feel a lot more pleasure?

At this point, M.B. just removed the surgical mask from her face, covered her mouth, and leaned over, trying desperately not to laugh. I am going to hell. At least everyone around me will be laughing for about five minutes, before they jam that pitchfork in my ass and start telling puns.

If you'll recall, I watched the earlier cleaning reflected overhead, a ghostly representation of a possible reality. This, this I really wanted to see. Of course, much of it involved the good doctor's arms overhead, so as I stared into the glass, looking at more and more instruments and gauze entering my widened mouth, I started falling into a fugue. Sort of lost myself in the moment, if having your face numbed, your teeth jammed open, your tooth drilled into, and your mouth lit up, can be considered a singular moment.

I could hear the drilling into my molar, I could feel the pressure of the good dentist grinding away the diseased bits, but I could not feel the accompanying pain. Would my life was like that, all pressure and sensation, no hurt. Throughout, I had to resist the wild-child urge to snake my tongue over to that side of my mouth and tap the drill, to see what it really felt like. There was probably a lot of enamel dust at this point, and I think, just maybe, a bit of saliva and enamel flashed against the screen, hung there as a glob.

Clamps, gauze, a strange device with a blue light special, that loving little filling, stuffed in and molded with an ease with which you cannot fill the longing holes in your life. This is around where I realized that I was out of it, and it couldn't have possibly been from the anesthesia. The dentist asked me to bite down on a coffee bean-brown strip of paper a couple of times, and it took me several seconds to realize she was even talking to me. Then, I was to grind my teeth across it, but I kept champing at it.

Then came the flossing, during which two strips snapped against the gateway my teeth formed. The dentist took her medical-grade Dremel and actually filed down some of my toothy edges. What. The. Flip. This, more than anything, disturbs me. The floss slides in and out like a piston in an engine. Even now, when I floss, the familiar struggle of me against myself is gone, replaced with a mocking admission that flossing the upper right teeth is no longer a challenge, an experience. Now, a most pedestrian in and out.

Oh, and I have a filling. Still waiting to pick up radio signals.