Cement and octocaine.
Feel how the dreaded grinding sound
Itself brings deeper pain.
Lament the broken tooth,
Bewail forgotten brush,
Count breaths Lamaze-like carefully
And leave arm-rests uncrushed.
This will be number 8 (not counting repairs)--not the sturdiest teeth in the world. The vibration of that drill seems to shake nerves the injections don't reach (sort of like the dispersed sensations of tickling, but painful). And yes, I've tried those Lamaze exercises that my better half and I practiced together, but I tend to get distracted. I have not transcended dental medication.
But I'd hate to be without modern dentistry; the alternatives are so much worse and tooth repairs work almost as well as the originals.
3 comments:
Do you indeed find dentistry painful? I've had two crowns and three root canals in the last couple of years, as 25-year-old fillings all started failing more or less at once. I didn't have an instant of pain during any of the procedures. I wonder if my dentist is better at anesthesia, or if it's just a different nerve setup?
I have had many agonising dental trips, including an apicoectomy and an extraction gone wrong. Things are a little better every year.
PJ O'Rourke noted that Modern. Dentistry. are the two words that should convince everyone not to consider time travel into the past.
I have nerves routed a little oddly (hereditary, it seems), and in earlier years the dentist didn't always hit the bulls-eye. The past few years of work have been pretty much direct pain free, but that grinding still tells the old hind brain that something is desperately wrong, and that registers as pain.
But O'Rourke is quite right, and I'm old enough to remember things being worse. I was fortunate; even in Africa we had access to decent dentists, which most people didn't.
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