Teeth can be such temperamental little things, can't they? We exert hundreds of pounds of jaw pressure upon them throughout our days, forcing them to chomp through a variety of reasonably edible matter. We attempt to care for them by harassing them with plastic-bristled scrub brushes, waxed string and various chemicals ranging from mild to searing.
And they still sometimes pester us.
Really, how dare they.
In my case it wasn't my teeth so much as my gums. And it wasn't all of my gums so much as a specific gum territory in the area of my mouth I lovingly call "Murphy's Law Alley". In that, anything that can go wrong with my teeth will definitely go wrong in that specific section. Namely, in the upper left quadrant.
Crazy canine tooth trapped in the roof of my mouth? Pull it right down into "Murphy's Law Alley". And just to make it more interesting, oh loving Honolulu oral surgeon person, pull the tooth down BACKWARDS....thereby forcing our infamous Kwaj dentist to create modern art out of my braces by stretching a variety of rubber bands all over the place in order to turn the backwards tooth forwards.
Which brings us to....
Root canal number one. Root Canal number one had to be done on crazy backwards roof of mouth tooth around 1990, when I was in the middle of my Teaching Credential program at UC Santa Cruz and had NO DENTAL INSURANCE. Mom and Dad loaned me the $900 needed to secure a root canal.... and voila. Pain gone. Tooth crowned.
Several years later (and this time I did, happily, have dental insurance), I needed a root canal on the tooth next door to the crazy backwards tooth. Of course.
And on it went. Until this week, on Valentine's Day, when I went to see the dentist to have him check a tooth whose enclosure of gums was unhappy.
And where was this unhappy tooth ala gum of mine?
Of course.
Murphy's Law Alley.
So they tilted me back in the magic chair. A state-of-the-art digital portrait of my teeth hovered above me on an elevated computer screen. Shiny magic dental machines surrounded me. Soft classical music played.
The hygienist draped a soft cloth over the upper portion of my face (a common thing here among various dentists and doctors--drape anything that isn't necessary to the task. ).
They explained in Japanese what they were going to do--namely, poke my upper jaw full of novocaine and then scrape the living daylights out of the tooth beneath the gums in question.
And so they smeared their targeted gum spot with a bitter numbing creme and poked the alarming novocaine needle into my mouth.
Not that I felt it. I was numb, after all.
But I could hear it.
The novocaine needle played When You Wish Upon A Star in series of high, tinny computerized notes. I was warned about this by Bob when he had gone in several weeks earlier for a similar issue (they love scraping gums here it seems).
But it was rather off-putting to have a novocaine needle buried in my mouth, only to have Disney music echoing through my skull. And I got to hear the song three times. One time for each poke of novocaine.
After the novocaine took hold, it was simply a matter of enduring various unpleasant, but painless sensations of scraping, pressing, pushing, shoving and grinding...all for the sake of one unfortunate tooth and it's enveloping gums.
I admit I was happy that my issue was restricted to just one tooth. Honestly, how many renditions of When You Wish Upon A Star would I have had to endure if I had needed this done on more teeth? Eww.
I am happy to report that there was no pain after the musical novocaine wore off, and my gums are on the road to recovery. I am back to harassing my teeth and gums with tiny plastic scrub brushes and waxed strings.
All is well.
And now I sense my true mission is done here....
Because the next time you hear Disney music, you're gonna think of...
yeah, my teeth.
Which, you have to admit, is just a little amusing.
Until next time....
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