Dentists Do, In Fact, Exist. And They Are So Not Awesome.

My kid brother (who is twenty seven, but for reasons I will one day blog about will always be called 'kid') got married two weekends ago. We went, it was nice, blah blah blah. While I was mingling with the guests and doing the usher thing someone handed me a piece of gum. I don't chew gum, but hey, I was drunk. I put it in my mouth and then forgot it was there, so I spent the entire ceremony chewing it, then chiding myself to stop chewing it, then drunkenly forgetting I was supposed to be remembering to stop chewing, then hating myself for being a lush. Finally it was over, and we walked over to get our pictures taken. In that process, the gum sucked one of the fillings out of my head.

Uh oh.

I hate the dentist. But big deal, everybody hates the dentist. Let me explain: I hate the dentist so much I have convinced myself that he does not exist. I live in a complete state of denial about the entire field of oral medicine. I diligently brush my teeth twice a day (and sometimes more often), and I've even been known to floss several times a week. I actually enjoy it. Of course, it helps that I tell myself that I'm doing it to ward off the dentist, who has taken on a bogeyman stature in my terrified mind.

It's not that I'm afraid of the pain, because I'm not. I know from pain. I could write a book comparing the various emergency rooms in the DC area. I've had actual medical procedures where they give you something to bite on to help with the pain. I'm serious. The kind of thing where the doctor says, "Look, this is going to really hurt and that's fucked up and I'm sorry. I forgive you in advance for all the terrible things you're about to shout at me, but don't worry because you will pass out before the pain actually does in fact kill you. Are you ready?"

But anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. All you need to know now is that I hate the dentist but the lost filling meant I had to go.

Of course I put off going right away though. Throughout the week I kept running my tongue over the hole in my molar where the filling used to be, and I kept telling myself that because there was no pain, I would probably be okay. In fact, I was doing just that on Friday when I jarred what appeared to be an even bigger piece of the tooth or filling or whatever loose, and I realized I had to see the dentist immediately. I frantically called all the dentists I could find with downtown offices until someone agreed to see me, and I jumped in a cab and went straight over. In retrospect, this was a bad idea.

Normally when I go to the dentist I load up on Ativan or Xanax just to make it through the ordeal. Again, it's not the pain I'm concerned about. It's the actual sitting in the chair, the anticipation and the concern and the wondering. The knowledge that once you commit, you're in it for the long haul. You don't get up with a tooth half-filled and say, "I can't handle it anymore today Doc, let's finish up tomorrow." You're pretty much stuck, and it always gets worse before it gets better. But on this day, I didn't have time to prepare and I didn't have any drugs.

I make it in to see the dentist, and he tells me I need a root canal. Soon. There is a bit of a language barrier. More specifically, an accent barrier. But we manage to communicate across the cultural divide, as he has apparently been observing my worst nightmares and taking exceptionally fucking detailed notes. He shows me the xray that shows how dangerously close to the root the cavity is, and how it's about to start really hurting. He explains that he can fill it, but he may hit the nerve and that would be bad. I did not go to dental school, but I'm guessing that if the dentist says 'bad' what he means is 'fucking agony.' I agree to have it done, and he begins to get ready.

Me: "Wait wait wait wait. You mean today, right now?"

Dentist: "Yes"

Me: "Oh my god! What kind of drugs can you give me?"

Dentist: "Just the novocaine"

Me: "Are you kidding?! Can I go get drunk first?"

Dentist: "Is joke?"

Me: "No really"

But no, despite what you may have seen in the movies, the dentist won't let you get hammered before he works on you. So I had no choice but to sit there and tough it out like a man. I laid back in the chair, they gave me a bib and a pair of goggles. A fucking pair of goggles?! When did they start doing that? They put the topical stuff on my gums to numb them before the novocaine shots. And then, in a move of unprecedented cowardice, I jumped up from the chair and called the whole thing off. I stopped them before they even started it. I just couldn't do it. No drugs? Not even an iPod to block out the sound of the drill? You've got to be kidding me. No chance.

The dentist, to his credit, tried to use psychology on me. He sat me down and started talking about the procedure. The intricate details of scrubbing out the roots and nerves in the holes in my skull and filling them with metal. I'm guessing that was to de-mystify the operation and therefore give me confidence. And in a way, it worked. It made me 100% confident that I couldn't do it. I tried to talk myself down from the ledge, but there was no use. I had found my happy place, and it was anywhere but the dentist.

I'm sure they made bets after I left about whether I would come back for my 8am appointment the following Monday. But they lost, because I did. I took an entire handful of Ativan, a dose of Immodium (you think I'm kidding- I'm not) and my iPod. I was a zombie by the time I got there (and I walked through downtown in rush hour traffic, to boot), but I made it to the chair and just tuned out. He did his thing, and I hated every second of it.

The worst part about a root canal is that there are so many worst parts that you can't pick which one to hate the most. Ten thousands shots in your mouth, keeping your mouth open for three hours, the inexplicable parade of torture instruments you see the dentist and his assistant pass back and forth in front of your face each time you're stupid enough open your eyes. And oh yeah, let's not forget the noise, inside your head, of an instrument actually drilling into the bones of your skull. Have you thrown up yet? Wait until you find out what drilled bone smells like.

Three hours later, the dentist starts packing it up. And I swear to god, he says to me, "I have some bad news." Did you ever have the acute feeling that you wished you were dead? I'm not talking about your high school goth phase where nobody understands you but Robert Smith, and you'll teach those jocks and assholes and they'll all be really sorry when they're at your funeral and they read your suicide note and you blame them for everything. No, I'm talking the sudden, overwhelming urge to kill yourself rather than endure what's about to happen in the next ten seconds. What, pray tell, is the bad news?

"I not finish, you come back tomorrow."

God, are you listening? It's not fucking funny anymore. I'm over it. If this is the way it's going to be, I'm checking out. If you thought the suicide note to the jocks was bad, wait til you hear what I've got to say to you. Clear your calendar.

(mouth full of gauze, head full of Ativan, soul full of generations of suffering condensed into three hours)

"Why?"

"Your tooth, it is problems."

You don't fucking say.

Turns out your average molar has three roots. This particular tooth has four. That means more work, more drilling, another morning at the dentist. The procedure has also become complicated because I have begun bleeding too much. Again, I'm no dentist, but I'm not exactly shocked that there has been some blood loss. He explains that he has filled the holes in my head with gauze, used pinball machine parts, and whatever else he had on hand. But if I come back tomorrow and be a good boy, he will try to finish. He actually said try, and he actually smiled when he said it. So, utterly despondent, I gather my stuff and walk home.

This time, the earliest I could get an appointment was 10:30am. Ever the optimist (that is so funny if you know her), Baby had the nerve to say, "Well, at least you can sleep in." Cause, you know, it's easy to sleep when you know you've got a root canal scheduled in the morning. But I took a potentially lethal dose of Ativan (how many milligrams are in a handful, anyway?) and walked back over to the dentist and finished the job.

What happened over the course of those two and a half hours during the second stint is somewhat of a blur. Crazy as it sounds, the combination of extreme anxiety, Ativan, and a veritable shit ton of novocaine knocked me out. Maybe my body just couldn't handle it anymore and I had no choice but to just lay there and take it like a bitch. I remember the dentist saying, "This part maybe is hurting" and then putting his hand on my forehead. I then remember crying out like a little girl before going limp. After that I just didn't fucking care anymore.

When he was finished, he told me about the necessary follow-up appointments and the concerns he had about the tooth immediately behind the one he just worked on. Apparently it's similar to the bad one, and it may need a root canal of its own. Consider this the first chapter of my suicide note. Are you there god? It's me, bryc3...