Another Hole in My Head
I went to the dentist earlier this afternoon to have a cavity filled. It was a quick and easy job, no more than 25 minutes from the moment I sat in the chair to paying the receptionist. Couldn’t have been more than three minutes’ drilling. Quick and easy for me, too; hardly felt a thing, though of course that distant sense of pressure and vibration carried into the jaw is always disturbing.
Unfortunately, the novocain is wearing off as I type, and my mouth is really starting to hurt, enough to make me wince and hold my cheek. I’d whimper audibly if I weren’t in a library.
Strangely, the pain doesn’t seem to be in the tooth itself, or even in the surrounding gum and jaw. Those are perfectly fine. No, the pain is high up in the fleshy part of my cheek, right where the needle carrying the painkillers went. This strikes me as highly ironic, and makes me wonder whether filling a cavity might be better without any painkillers at all on occasions where the cavity is small and shallow, as mine was. Maybe not. Getting down into the pulp might be excruciating, if only for an instant. Possibly excruciating enough to justify hours of post-operative pain from the hypodermic needle. Perhaps it’s a necessary safety feature: even an instantaneous pain might cause a patient to jerk dangerously in the presence of a diamond drill. Quite probably I’m overlooking other problems; I’m not an expert in any sense.
Beside me is my dinner: a roast beef hoagie to gobble just before the writers’ group begins its weekly meeting. A few experimental flexes indicate that both biting into the sandwich and chewing it afterwards will be agonizing. My appetite is fading; the tummy wants food, but the jaw rebels. Perhaps I’ll wait until I get home and have some soup instead, although 8:15 (when I get home) is a long way off.
Despite all this discomfort, however, it’s important to keep this in mind: If the worst thing you have to gripe about after treating a cavity is the sting of a needle, count your blessings. Think of your caveman ancestors—or even your grandparents—for whom keeping teeth into old age simply didn’t happen, never mind the lingering agony of a tooth not yet ready to come out, or the dangers of an infected jawbone and other horrors.
I get to keep my teeth--all my teeth—in exchange for a couple hours’ pain every few years? Fuckin’ awesome. I’ll take the miracles of dentistry over the miracles of television or nuclear power or the moon landing, hands down.