That Novocain Smile Says I DID IT

I know that I've become one of those bloggers over the last year since I quit drinking, the kind who seems to turn every event into a deeply meaningful experience that changes my whole life, but I'm telling the truth when I do it. Getting sober means waking up, and waking up means that I am seeing things with a degree of clarity for the first time in my adult life. It all feels so big and meaningful. In a way, I'm a teenager again, and life itself has become this consciousness raising experience.

Anyway, this is all just apologetics for what I'm going to write about going to the dentist, which I will keep short, because it's late, and I still have to pack for Blissdom Canada, and the final episodes of my Thirtysomething binge aren't going to watch themselves.



I had years of being beaten down by an abusive work environment and depression and health issues and alcohol abuse and not doing what in my heart I knew I should be doing because it meant making grand life changes like quitting drinking, so when I finally had the courage to quit drinking, I knew that staying sober meant not just being courageous about that one thing but being courageous about lots of things, because part of my habit of drinking was my habit of living under the thumb of my fear. On top of quitting drinking, I had to do things like come out as a blogger and speak in public and own up to my part in difficult situations and go to the dentist.

I did my best to put off going to the dentist, but then my filling fell out the other day, and the jig was up. Fucking jigs. They're always up.

So, I had to climb another of my Everests, only this time I almost believed I could do it before I did it. All of my other Everests have been leaps out into abysses I wasn't quite sure wouldn't consume me whole, but this one I kind of thought I could do.

It's an interesting thing, this starting to believe in myself. I don't know what to make of it yet, but it's interesting. I'm almost starting to think that I might be ready to knock the training wheels off, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. I mean, I haven't even figured what my training wheels are yet in this metaphor.



But I went to the dentist! And I lived! And not only that, but I knew I would follow through with it, and I kind thought I would make it through right from the beginning, and now I get to eat chocolate again without electric fire ripping along my nerves for minutes on end, and all for the low, low price of 584 dollars. Why my dentist isn't dripping in furs and diamonds, I have no idea.

Fillings Fall Out All Of The Time, The World's An Imperfect Place

I was walking down the street yesterday afternoon chewing this new gum I found. I like the flavour, but it made me think This must be what they mean when they say something sticks to dental work, because, man, it really seemed to be sticking to my dental work.

I threw out the piece I'd been chewing, poked around my teeth with my tongue a bit, and, lo and behold, this fell out of one of my molars:



I am terrified of dentists. I was terrified before a certain couple of bad incidents happened to me, but, afterwards, I was !!!TERRIFIED!!! in all-caps with exclamation points on both sides.

When I was in elementary school back in the early 1980s, we had dental hygienists who had offices right in the schools. One day, they called me out of class to go to the dentist, and all the kids in my class yelled Oooooo, which everyone did every time someone was called out of class to go to the dentist. They gave me three fillings in the lower right side of my mouth that day. It turned out that it was the wrong side of my mouth, because they called me back in the next day, everyone said Oooooo again, and they gave me three fillings on the lower left side of my mouth, where they were supposed to be in the first place. I guess they were looking at the slides backwards. Twice the fillings for half the fun! Jerks.

When I was 21, I went in to have the wisdom teeth on my left side pulled out. Freezing doesn't work very well on me, so more than ten needles into the procedure, my dentist — whose last name was Hertz, if you'll believe it — asked if I had money to cover laughing gas. The teeth were already partially lifted out from her repeated attempts in between needles, and so they had to come out. I didn't have any money, because I was both unemployed and uninsured at the time, so she had two assistants hold me down while she yanked those wisdom teeth out without freezing.

True fact: I know what medieval torture feels like.

As a result of what I would call PTSD, I have been to the dentist only twice in the last 17 years, which means that these fillings in my head are much older than that, which means that I am pretty sure the next dentist I see is going to suggest that we pull out all of my teeth and start fresh with a spanky new pair of synthetic chompers, which would be just fine with me.

I'm at the point where I hate having teeth altogether.

After that filling fell out yesterday afternoon, which is really only the last piece of a larger filling that I'm fairly certain has been falling out for a couple of years, I actually figured that it would be no big deal. I'm not all that attached to any of my teeth, especially one at the very back of my mouth, and I'd had no pain associated with it before this last bit fell out.

Oh, how very wrong I was.

That last bit was apparently the only thing standing between me and immense pain at the first sign of anything sweet. I found this out when I nearly hit the floor after sucking on the chocolate from a Kinder Surprise Egg later last night. The pain from that chocolate radiated forward from the back of my mouth straight through all the teeth on my upper right side for more than five minutes, which five minutes I spent gripping the counter and wondering where my pliers were. Even remembering that pain brings tears to my eyes.

I actually considered the possibility of pouring Krazy Glue or bathtub sealant in there, because what's wrong with a little chemical poisoning, but I've come to terms with the fact that terrified, impervious-to-freezing me really does have to find a dentist.

At some point.

I am more than will to give up sugar forever and wait for my nerves to kill themselves off. I am still exploring my options.

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UPDATE: I made an appointment for next Wednesday afternoon with a dentist based solely on a Twitter recommendation and the fact that the number 666 was in the phone number. I went by the logic that real evil makes attempts to cloak itself. Hold me.

Quitting Smoking, Whitening, LFHCS, Vatican Insanity, News, Mr. Picassohead, And Tooth Stains

I have quit smoking. I have been working steadily at this habit for well over fifteen years. Friday night was my last night of smoking. I did not know it at the time, but I smoked much and incessantly for hours on end. On Saturday, due to my overindulgence of the night before, I did not even think of smoking. Well, maybe once or twice, but not all that seriously. On Sunday, I thought about how I had been without a cigarette for a day-and-a-half, and I considered quitting. I gave myself until Monday morning to decide. If I wasn’t dying by then, I would give it a good effort. Monday morning rolled around, and I wasn’t feeling too awful. My mind was in obsessive mode, though. Every morning on my way to the bus, I have a smoke. I have it all timed out perfectly so that I can light my cigarette when I leave my building, finish it at the bus stop, and chug some of my thermosed coffee before the bus comes. Not smoking fucks up the whole routine. So, smoking was my first thought upon waking, it wandered in and out of my scattered shower thoughts, it registered a bit when I was checking the weather (I thought about how my fingers would not freeze without having to hold a smoke and then immediately wanted one), and by the time I was brushing my teeth, the thought of that longed-for morning cigarette was constant and nagging loudly. Thankfully, being the creature of habit that I am, almost as soon as I got on the bus, the thought floated away, because I do not associate being on the bus with smoking. Anyway, now it is Tuesday evening, which means that I have almost gone for four whole days without a cigarette. I haven’t even cried yet, which sounds pitiful, but it is my usual reaction to nicotine withdrawal. I am doing not too bad. Today, though, something really, really, sad and a little distressing hit me about this no-smoking thing: I am going to lack for beer in a big, big way. I love beer, and in return, beer is kind to me; cigarettes and beer are nearly inextricably linked together, and the three of us make a happy if not terribly attractive trio. Without the cigarettes, the beer is going to have to do without me for a while. Oh, woe is me. You see, today is Tuesday, as I have already stated, and on Tuesdays I like to go for a pint and write or read for an hour or two. All day this Tuesday ritual kept popping into my brain, and I had to keep wagging my mental tut-tut finger at it and re-explaining why the beer had to be put on an indefinite hiatus until this nicotine/cigarettes thing was worked out. It is so sad, and now Tuesdays seem so hollow, so emptied of goodness, and future good health just seems so lame. This future-good-health thing sounds like something a substitute teacher would try to make sound exciting, but you know how lame it is, especially since your real teacher will be returning tomorrow, and it doesn’t really matter if you do this lame thing or not. That is how I feel: like I am stuck with my substitute teacher with the pea soup breath circa grade four in perpetuity. Oh, woe is me. (Did I use “in perpetuity” correctly? My dictionary only gave me bare-bones help with this one).

In an effort to keep myself on the no-smoking bit, I have started a home tooth-whitening process. I figure that if I spend the bucks on this whitening stuff and start to see results, I will be less likely to go back to the habit that made my teeth this beautiful shade of piss-yellow in the first place. I also figure that my smelling so much less like an ash tray and having a decently flashy smile will cause the Fiery One to be uncontrollably hot for me eternally.

Little Red Boat put me on to this really funny site. Take a look at the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. It is too good to miss. Really. Don’t miss it.

Don’t you just think the Pope rocks hard! I do! AIDS for everyone!

The News Butcher isn’t bad for getting the kind of news you don’t usually hear about.

An awesome time-killer, especially when you are trying to look terribly busy and you don’t care how long that damn telephone rings, (or this is mindless enough that you could do this while on the telephone if you really wanted to. It’s like doodling, only without a pen and paper or the ability to make your own self-directed shapes).

Tooth Stain Facts:
* Tea, coffee, red wine, and smoking are common factors in developing stained teeth.
* The use of a certain family of antibiotics, known as tetracyclines, during childhood is also known for causing brown tooth stains.
* Excessive ingestion of fluoride by young children can cause a type of tooth staining which is termed “fluorosis,” which appears as an overly white spot on the tooth. Fluorosis can be masked by bleaching normally coloured teeth to a lighter shade.
* A tooth that has had a root canal treatment will darken more than the surrounding teeth as years pass.
* Teeth that have a history of being traumatized, such as being bumped in an accident, will darken over time.
* If there is a problem with gum recession, the root surface may become visible and appears darker than the rest of the tooth. That is because the root surface is not covered by enamel but by dentin, which is naturally darker than tooth enamel.