Yesterday’s adventure was only round one. I went back this afternoon for work on three front teeth, including getting the chipped front tooth fixed. It wasn’t a problem the dentist was worried about, but it looks better and is beginning to feel better. I’m still a little numb from the procedure and my front teeth feel strange. It’s not pain, but a strange feeling that I’m not sure where my top front teeth are. My upper lip was numb, but I could still move it and be understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yesterday was a cleaning and a lecture about flossing. Today was drilling. Today was smoke and burning smells. Today was a solid hour of keeping my jaw stretched. Two people looking at me from above, no eye contact because that’s not their job, fingers poking into my mouth, rinses, more drills, scraping, and polishing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was everything I remember as being afraid of as a kid. I warned them at the start that I do have a history of metabolizing the anesthesia rather quickly. The last time I was at that dentist for a root canal I needed multiple shots, but today I did not. I could recognize the fears for what they were and that helped. Reminding myself to breathe helped. Working on relaxing my shoulders helped, even though they didn’t relax. They rarely do, so it wasn’t an added burden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could feel a lot of vibrations but didn’t have any pain. When I thought I was going to feel something, I remembered something similar to this pull quote that shows up on Instagram all the time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We suffer more from imagination than from reality<\/p>Seneca<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
I told my imagination to take a hike, essentially. I also trusted in the fact that the dentist spent who-knows-how-many years in school and as an intern. She wouldn’t have been brought into an old established practice with some serious credentials. She wouldn’t make a mistake she couldn’t correct. She entered the profession fore-warned about assholes like me who bitch about how much they hate dentists because the dentist they went to as a kid was an asshole yadda yadda yadda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also reminded myself that you can’t bleed to death through the gums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next week will be harder. Two crowns next to each other in the back of my mouth. That’s gonna be a jaw-breaker special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday’s adventure was only round one. I went back this afternoon for work on three front teeth, including getting the chipped front tooth fixed. It wasn’t a problem the dentist was worried about, but it looks better and is beginning to feel better. I’m still a little numb from the procedure and my front teeth … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[70],"tags":[128,127],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armchair-philosophy","tag-dentist","tag-fear"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuarenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}