Why I Hate Dentists (Today, Anyway...)

I went through a hideous month of dental crises earlier this year, where I had first one side of my face and then the other blow up like a balloon and threaten to explode with infection and pain (TMI, I know…) An extraction and a root canal later, I am mostly recovered from that trauma, and able to eat more comfortably than I have been in ages, since I can now chew reasonably well on both sides of my mouth (this was prevented for many years by a gigantic crater in a bottom molar.)

Of course, once you go in for emergency dental work, the dentist has to take stock of everything that is amiss with your mouth (which is plenty, in my case, since I hadn’t seen a dentist in an embarrassingly long time), and makes a series of appointments to start heading off all those various emergencies-waiting-to-happen.

This morning, I reported for my first post-root canal appointment, the one where we moved on to the next tooth on the agenda. "We" decided "we" needed to start a root canal on one of my front teeth. And right now, "we" are not too happy. I was on top of the world, not a twinge of pain to be found in my entire mouth—almost a miracle for me—when I got in the car this morning. And now, NOW as my upper lip and nose recover from the massive novocaine bolus, I’m sneezing, my nose is streaming, my lips feel like they are not connected to my face, and the spot where he drove in the anaesthetic into my face hurts like hell. Is there such a thing as a black nose (kind of like a black eye, only lower and more centrally located….)? Because that’s what I feel like I have.

This is a new twist on my dental experience. Instead of crawling into the dentist’s office in dire pain, begging for relief, I crawl out of the office in that condition. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the day…