Novocain and me -- not a love story

I hate my teeth!

Oh, they look good, and they are masterpieces of cosmetic art. I have a shiny white smile, but that glorious façade hides a multitude of woes from over many years, dating back to childhood.

I am only mentioning this because I just came back from the dentist and was told I will very shortly need a root canal. Not that the prospect frightens me – I have very little dental fear, mainly because I’ve used the skills of their practitioners a great deal in order to retain that shiny white smile and to not be in any sort of discomfort. But, the root canal that was advised is just another chapter in a process that never ceases to depress me.

As for my dentist, I love him. He’s wonderful. If he were a beautiful woman I’d run off and marry him. Since he’s a big, burly, hearty Icelander, I’ll let that thought pass. But, he is brilliant at his work, and he has done wonderful things with the raw material I’ve presented him. He has done wonderful things with an absolute minimum of pain.

But, I mentioned that my dental grief stems from childhood. In childhood I had a terrible dentist. To say he was a hack would be almost too kind. He was a bald, wall-eyed smarmy lecher – even by age 12 I figured out what he was up to with his comely assistants. And, when he wasn’t sticking his hand up their skirts (I actually saw one slap his roving hand away one time, and she was no longer there by the time of my next appointment), he was butchering my mouth. A session with him was one of almost perpetual pain, and swelling that would last for days and days afterward.

I once asked my mother why we had to go to that awful dentist. The response was that he was a friend of my grandfather’s; therefore Grandpa would be hurt if we went elsewhere. So, to preserve Grandpa’s feelings we persisted to be tended by a guy who didn’t really believe in the use of Novocain, unless it was for “something big”, like an extraction. Simple filling? Well, you might as well have been back in cowboy days, except patients weren’t given a shot of whiskey to ease the pain.

What happened, of course, was that I was left with a great deal of both fear and antagonism towards the wide world of dentistry. So, I neglected my teeth. I did what I was supposed to, like brushing and flossing, but otherwise, I never crossed the threshold of a dental practice for years. Finally, when pain became unbearable, I had to do something. Blessedly, on the advice of a friend, I found the man who has been my dentist for a quarter of a century.

Since then he has done his damnedest to keep my teeth functioning, and he’s done a fine job. He is indeed so well respected that he is no longer accepting delivery of first-borns as a payoff for him including a newbie on his patient list. Nobody can get on. If you are on his list, as am I, then you are preternaturally blessed.

That said, this morning’s encounter still pisses me off. Not at what he does, but the travesty of my early dentistry that left me the way I am today.