this surprise root canal experience has had repercussions we are yet to enjoy

Well, after dentist appointment #4, I have a little dentist trauma to deal with. Now that the local has worn off, my face hurts and I’m a little upset. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. But I have one more appointment scheduled. So that will be four sessions on this one fucking suprise root canal. Today we filled the canals (3 of them, no less). We attempted it without local today, but one good jab in the hole with the pokey thing and I shrieked in agony, and the dentist decided we needed local. He doesn’t understand why it hurts as much as it does. I try to be brave, but mostly, there’s some crying.
The tears just sort of roll down my cheek and into my hairline (because I’m upside down, flat on my back in the chair), and then the snot sort of trickles down inside my throat and makes me cough. And big, long strings of cry-saliva attach themselves to the dentist’s rubber gloves as he reaches for another pointy thing, and then flick off to slap my chin. As he rubs his rubbery fingers around inside my mouth, the cry-saliva – sort of thicker and goobier than normal, watery saliva – adds a new layer of interest to the whole experience, and I can’t help but think about vaginas. And how your vaginal mucous changes when you’re ovulating. So I can’t help but associate this whole thing with hot sex.
So, you know, this surprise root canal experience has had repercussions we are yet to enjoy.
Beyond the delight of post-probing jaw pain, impending (massive) debt and disturbing thoughts about bodily secretions, all this dental work has at least given me an excuse to see a fair few films. Word Play = good stuff.

6 Comments

  1. “Word Play = good stuff.”
    Isn’t it, just? We saw it half an hour ago, and we’re still grinning. I stopped doing crosswords a few years ago, but I think I’ll go back to them.

  3. Wow.
    I’d be careful with that hot-sex-unbearable-pain-association thingy.
    I think the only time I’ve ever cried with pain as an adult was the day after the 1983 federal election when Labor got back in after 8 years and I was so elated I forgot to watch what I was doing with the Wiltshire Sta-Sharp vegie knife and cut the tip of my left index finger completely off. On the slant. The local in the hand hurt so much I couldn’t imagine how it could have hurt any more if the young hotshot plastic surgeon had sewed it back on without anaesthetic, but he assured me it would have.

  4. I’m trying not to think about fingertips being cut off. Really trying.
    I’m all about the crying in pain these days. Well, since the first visit to the dentist where I’d intended to be brave, but was caught unawares with the whole far-more-painful-than-I-thought issue.
    I also cry in the cinema (when it’s warranted), when reading books with sad (or particularly happy) bits, and when watching DVDs at home. I am soon to begin crying at public meetings and in lectures.
    You know, when that dentist’s in there rummaging around with the ‘4 diamond head’, anything that distracts me from the thought of what he’s actually doing in my gum (no, I didn’t need to know it was 5mills below the gumline, thanks) is a good thing. Last week it was planning my final classes. This week I was all out of teaching plans to make, so I settled on planning marking and organising MLX volunteers. The mucous thing? That comes to mind every week. More so when I’m doing a big cry, though.

  6. I’ve cried with pain a few times — as opposed to my regular crying for no reason — but most recently when I fell down whilst bushwalking and banged up my knee (said knee is still f*cked, 7 months later). Anyway, I nearly vomited from the pain and had to lie in the dirt sobbing for about half an hour until I felt strong enough to be carried, fireman-style, by my boyfriend and his brothers-in-law, back up to the car. My boyfriend’s mother even spat on a hanky and dabbed at my face while I was doing this.
    All in all, not one of my finest moments.

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