Au My God

 Got some new teeth today.


This was my 4th visit to the dentist in 2021. Horrible. 
Won't say much... just that being a dentist must be so strange. 

Probing, drilling, excavating, picking, injecting, extracting all day every day. Putting your hands inside the gaping face-holes of an unending assembly line of strangers. To be a dentist you must either love humanity or despise it. I don't think you can be indifferent.

Being a patient has got to be the worst though. 
On the more extreme end of the spectrum you have the root canal where you have someone who's first name you'll never know literally hollowing out the leg of a tooth in the back of your mouth... drilling it, scooping it, filing it, truly digging out blood and nerve and decay with small bendy metal files that apparently break inside your tooth 3 out of 10 times. I had one in January and the particular endodontist (apparently not a word??) going to work on the root of my poor #15 molar was really putting in the elbow grease. 

I had to keep my eyes open and stared at a ceiling grate so long I started to hallucinate. The alternative was to close my eyes but every time I did I visualized what was happening because I stupidly watched THIS VIDEO the night before my procedure. The discomfort came less from the pain of the procedure and more from the mental anxiety. White knuckling it for 2 hours whilst waiting for the instruments to break off inside my face warranted the painkiller and weed coma I put myself in afterwards. 

And then, on the light end of the spectrum, let's say a cleaning... even those are intrusive:
"Please lie back whilst I sink this metal spike in between your teeth and your gums to find out how far I can stick it before you bleed or wince." 

No thanks. 

Whenever I have to go to the dentist I think about saving up some money, taking some time off of work and going to one of those international dentist destinations to have them remove all my teeth and just give me dentures. It seems like we're all destined for them eventually, why put it off. 

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