Dental Hell

The facts:
1. It takes two to three times the normal amount of novacaine to get me numb enough for dental work.

2. Dentists are nothing but car salesmen with needles and other hurty things.

3. Both groups won’t settle for only selling you what you came for. It’s all about adding on extras.

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I was in fourth grade when I had my first toothache and dentist visit. It was also my last visit until early adulthood.

My tooth decided to commence torture at about 3:00 in the morning. I woke my mom up, only to be sent back to bed “until morning.” Have you ever tried to sleep with a toothache? Don’t you just love how it throbs with pain, each and every time your heart beats? Why the heck do we stick our tongue in it every few minutes? To make sure it’s still there? Or that it still hurts?

Morning finally arrives, my mom isn’t happy with me for having a toothache. She’s even less happy that she couldn’t get a dentist appointment later in the day. They would work me in, if we got there in a hurry. They worked us in alright; we sat in the waiting room for over an hour. My mom was fuming. When she gets mad, she gets loud. I was afraid that she was going to get us kicked out of there, toothache and all.

I was finally ushered into the back. I didn’t like the looks of the chair, the lights, the tools, everything! They took an x-ray and he told me I had a cavity. No duh! The dentist told me he was going to give me some injections to “numb” my mouth before he started. I remember his exact words, “This won’t hurt a bit.” Lying P.O.S. bastard! They hurt like hell. With every needle prick, my butt cheeks sucked up more and more of the chair. He told me he’d give me some time to “numb up” and he left the room

About ten minutes later he came back and was ready to go. I told him that I didn’t feel numb. He said he gave me more than enough and I should be numb. I said I wasn’t. He huffed for a few seconds and then rammed some more novacaine into my mouth. Ten minutes later he comes back and tries again. He’s met with the same results. He’s now clearly pissed off at me. He told me I had to be numb. I told him I wasn’t. He told me to trust him; I wouldn’t feel any pain at all. If I did, I was to raise my hand and he would stop.

The second the drill hit my cavity, I saw stars. I’d never felt pain like that before. I shot my hand up, but he kept going. I finally pushed his hands away from my mouth. Before I could even say anything he loudly said “there is no way you can feel anything, you are numb!” He just didn’t want to believe me. I closed my mouth and wouldn’t open it. He slammed the equipment down and huffed out of the room.

I knew that when he came back into the room, he wouldn’t be alone. My mom would be with him. She’d probably be so mad, that she’d threaten to take me home,and yank the tooth out with a pair of pliers. When Dr. Mengele (yes, this is a test) came back in the room, my mother was indeed with him. She shot me a look that was clearly meant to serve as a threat. I told her I wasn’t numb and what he was doing hurt me. The dentist told my mom I was lying. I yelled that I wasn’t. My mom told me to shut the fuck up, stop my crying, just lie there and take it.

I was more afraid of her than the dentist, so that is exactly what I did. One more lesson from dear old mom, on how to endure pain.

I found out a couple of years later, that the "dentist" was one of my mom's clients "gentleman friends."