I'd had made the appointment sometime time ago now. Squirreled away in my diary as a future event, made long enough in advance as to allow me plenty of time to come around to the idea that I needed a filling.
I'm not scared of the Dentist in the slightest - but I do need some time to psych myself up for the event. So swinging myself up the spiral staircase on F Day, I felt mentally prepared. Little did I know that my Dentist has been studying the many benefits of supermarket marketing strategies.
What started as one filling turned out to be - buy one get one free! The trouble was that one was on the upper left hand side and the other the upper right. I did suggest that I schedule another appointment but, ever the economist he insisted - No point wasting two appointments, and you're here now!
Two injections left me gagging at the residual taste and unable to feel most of my top lip and half my nose. I don't mind my lips being frozen, but I've found it to be the oddest sensation in the world - knowing that you're breathing but being unable to feel the air passing up one of your nostrils. I wasn't the only one who thought it was odd, my brain was experiencing involuntary bouts of mini panics that I wasn't getting air and couldn't breath.
This reminds me of the time when I was about 8 years old when I got a flat caramel toffee stuck to the roof of my mouth. Penny sweets in my day were large enough to feel like they could restrict your whole throat and i started to flick my tongue around the edges of the toffee trying to break the suction, when this had no effect I even started to run around in a panic. For a brief moment I felt like I was gonna die, Luckily salvation came before anyone else witnessed my swan song. As I had a Zen realisation which managed to penetrated the panic. That I could indeed save myself from the brink of death by just using my pinkie to flick the toffee off the roof of my mouth. Boy did I feel silly.
And so it was on with the business, which involved me being opened mouth and despite being as accommodating as I could physically manage, I began to suspect that my Dentist and his assistant had made a wager about how many pieces of equipment and fingers they could get into my mouth. Whilst I lay marvelling at the until then undiscovered Tardis quality of my mouth, I lay back and began to imagine that they were playing a reverse version of 'Dentistry 'Buckaroo'. How much could they really pack in there before she blows!
To add to the excitement throughout the procedure - questions were asked of me, which remained unanswered; rivulets of saliva ran down my chin as a well appointed waterfall; and my neck was twisted into positions that only the TV toothpaste brusher with the flip top head could master.
Once it was over my dentist nonchalantly asked "Are you OK?"' to which I replied, "NO, I've just had my filling ratio increased by 100%; half my face is numb and my mouth feels like its been stretched to look like Wallace's widest grin." His reply? - "So you're OK then" See you in six months!
Roll credits - join in next time for another thrilling episode of 'Dentistry Buckaroo!"
I'm not scared of the Dentist in the slightest - but I do need some time to psych myself up for the event. So swinging myself up the spiral staircase on F Day, I felt mentally prepared. Little did I know that my Dentist has been studying the many benefits of supermarket marketing strategies.
What started as one filling turned out to be - buy one get one free! The trouble was that one was on the upper left hand side and the other the upper right. I did suggest that I schedule another appointment but, ever the economist he insisted - No point wasting two appointments, and you're here now!
Two injections left me gagging at the residual taste and unable to feel most of my top lip and half my nose. I don't mind my lips being frozen, but I've found it to be the oddest sensation in the world - knowing that you're breathing but being unable to feel the air passing up one of your nostrils. I wasn't the only one who thought it was odd, my brain was experiencing involuntary bouts of mini panics that I wasn't getting air and couldn't breath.
This reminds me of the time when I was about 8 years old when I got a flat caramel toffee stuck to the roof of my mouth. Penny sweets in my day were large enough to feel like they could restrict your whole throat and i started to flick my tongue around the edges of the toffee trying to break the suction, when this had no effect I even started to run around in a panic. For a brief moment I felt like I was gonna die, Luckily salvation came before anyone else witnessed my swan song. As I had a Zen realisation which managed to penetrated the panic. That I could indeed save myself from the brink of death by just using my pinkie to flick the toffee off the roof of my mouth. Boy did I feel silly.
And so it was on with the business, which involved me being opened mouth and despite being as accommodating as I could physically manage, I began to suspect that my Dentist and his assistant had made a wager about how many pieces of equipment and fingers they could get into my mouth. Whilst I lay marvelling at the until then undiscovered Tardis quality of my mouth, I lay back and began to imagine that they were playing a reverse version of 'Dentistry 'Buckaroo'. How much could they really pack in there before she blows!
To add to the excitement throughout the procedure - questions were asked of me, which remained unanswered; rivulets of saliva ran down my chin as a well appointed waterfall; and my neck was twisted into positions that only the TV toothpaste brusher with the flip top head could master.
Once it was over my dentist nonchalantly asked "Are you OK?"' to which I replied, "NO, I've just had my filling ratio increased by 100%; half my face is numb and my mouth feels like its been stretched to look like Wallace's widest grin." His reply? - "So you're OK then" See you in six months!
Roll credits - join in next time for another thrilling episode of 'Dentistry Buckaroo!"
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