Dental *AND* Mental.

Yesterday I went to the dentists office

This would be the first time I’d see Dr. Danford ever since he saw my Open interpretation, “Dental or Mental”. I’d given him about 2 years to prepare some form of torture on me.

Dr. Danford loves to torture me. And since hearing my speech, he’s been looking forward to it immensely.

I sat in the waiting room, reading a current events magazine.

“Holly?”

I looked up. A pleasant young lady with glasses was standing there with a clipboard in her hand. She seemed nice. Not evil. No, not evil at all.

‘Yes?”

“Hi” she smiled

“Hi” Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. I followed her into the back and took a seat in the dental chair. She gently clipped a little paper ‘bib’, if you will, around my neck. See? Dentists aren’t so bad! She said something else to me. I can’t remember what it was, but that’s the point when I realized she had some kind of foreign accent. Now I think accents are awesome, but last time I dealt with someone with a similar accent, I got viciously shanghaied into blowing 25 dollars for a small jar of goo. I’m not sure I want the same kind of disaster especially when she has many sharp objects and I’m strapped helplessly into a chair.

And that’s when things went downhill. She grabbed a large plastic apron-type thing and dropped it on me. It was quite heavy. I wondered if this was what wearing a straight jacket would feel like. She then opened a cabinet and pulled out an electronic device with a camera lense on it. It looked frightening. She stuck a little card into my mouth.

“Bite down” she said.

She had all the weapons, I was sitting in the chair; therefore, I didn’t dare disobey. She walked away and pressed a button. I guess the card thing was film and the electronic thing was a high tech camera. She came back, pulled the card out and got another one. This time, she placed it even further back in my mouth. She was only centimeters away from activating my gag reflex. She did the same thing on the other side of my mouth. Not fun.

She then leaned my chair back and pulled down a bright blinding light from the ceiling. At that moment, Dr. Danford called from the cubicle next to us

“Make sure to use all the pointy sharp things on her!”
My orthodontist looked puzzled.
“Why?” she asked.
“Just because.”
“You’re da boss”

Dr. Danford loved to joke like that, but the young lady’s innocent and naïve response made me worried that she took him seriously.
“Well, it looks like you haven’t had cleaning for very long time” she said, pulling out a file. “Four years!”
“Well actually, we did have a cleaning recently, just not here.”
“Oh? Where was dat?”
“A dentists office….in… the mall”
‘Oh…da mall.” she didn't sound like she believed me at all.
She proceeded to pull out a double-edged hook thing and start picking away at my teeth.

This is when things really went downhill.

Each time she scraped a tooth, it sounded like she was chiseling granite off my teeth, and then the hook would go somewhere into my gum. I started getting a little nervous when I saw some blood on her gloved hands. She seemed to be scratching my gums more than my teeth. I was hoping either my winces or my blood curdling screams would give her a clue that I didn’t like getting scratched with the hook. At one point, her hand jerked suddenly and poked my gum. Ironically, this accident didn’t hurt me half as much as the actual procedure.

“Sorry, I hurt you?”

I didn’t really know how to answer this question. At that moment, no, she didn’t hurt me. But every other moment she did. Fortunately, she was still sticking things in my mouth, so a mere “ungha” satisfied her. One thing I love about going to the dentists, you can just answer “ungha” to all their questions. You can’t do that anywhere else.

“Like Dr. Danford say, I use sharp pokes” she laughed
UUNNNGGHHAAAA!! my mind screamed.

She then took this buzzing thing and began running it over my teeth with some strange Martian toothpaste. It tasted weird. Then she squirted water into my mouth and vacuumed it up with a little tube.
Then she pulled the hook out again and continued her architecture. I wondered what the Venus de Milo would look like in my mouth.

“When was this visit to…da mall?”
“Uh, about a year ago”
“Ya, you got lot of stuff in here”

A classic and literal example of adding insult to injury.

“You floss?”

Darn, I was hoping to avoid this question. To be honest, I’m not a huge believer in flossing. You run string through sewing machines, not people.

“Ungha.”

I looked at my teeth in the reflection of her glasses as she continued with her hook. Every tooth was covered in blood. I looked at my blood dripping off of the hook as she lifted it from my mouth.

This was probably the point at which I mercifully went into a coma.

“Dr. Danford examine you in few minutes, m’K?”

Great. Terrific. Fantastic.

I’m Gonna Die.

He actually wasn’t so bad. No death threats this time. He asked me if I was excited about Nationals, and we talked a little about debate (or he did, and I’d agree with an “uunngh”). He used the hook on me too, but he aimed for my teeth, not my gums.

He then took at look at my X-rays

“Oh my gosh!” he exclaimed.

I closed my eyes. Not good.

“Just kidding.”

Very funny, Dr. Danford.

So my teeth are looking ok now that they’ve been chipped, squirted, grinded and thoroughly tortured, but apparently my wisdom teeth are coming in and will need to be removed within a year. And yes, I know that "getting your wisdom teeth pulled is easy, it's the recovery that's excruciating!!" is what all my friends are going to tell me. So please, just let me bear it silently and don't remind me.

Ok?

~*Hol