Yuck...

So the last time I was at the dentist, he told me that all of my nighttime tooth grinding (which apparently is a lot more common than I thought – according to the dentist, just about everyone grinds their teeth at night…) has been causing small cracks to form in some of my molars. Obviously I take my tooth grinding quite seriously. None of that half-hearted gnashing of teeth for ME. If you’re gonna do something, do it right. Uh, yeah. So anyway – because I seem to be unconsciously cracking my teeth while I sleep, the dentist recommended placing crowns on the affected molars over the next year or two or three… or at least before I manage to pulverize my teeth into enamel oblivion…

So I scheduled the first crown placement for this morning. Now, I haven’t had any kind of serious dental work in a really long time, so I’d forgotten about how the effects of Novocain linger for hours after the dental office has been left behind. As I sit here attempting to drink coffee with half a functioning mouth and looking like a stroke victim, I wonder if the crowns will truly be worth the trouble… I certainly hope so.

I must say, though, that I WAS happy to see that the dental office has upgraded their distraction-oriented entertainment. Last I can remember, they only offered a radio with AM/FM stations and that’s about it. And honestly, listening to a fuzzy radio station and hoping to hear a decent song now and then, while being subjected to less-than-witty DJ banter and a peppering of boring commercials, really only serves to ADD to the discomfort of a dentist’s chair. So it was nice when they actually offered me an iPod with movies and some nifty movie-watching glasses. In any other situation – say, riding in a car or a plane for a few hours – I would’ve found the set-up quite cool. But it’s hard to find anything very cool when someone is jabbing sharp instruments into your mouth… Anyway, they only had about a dozen movies to choose from, and I settled on Monsters, Inc. Which I suppose was included for kids, right? But I thought that something with lots of vibrant colors and great computer graphics would distract me more than “Maid in Manhattan” or “Groundhog Day” (two of the other choices in the list…).

And for a little while, I was able to focus on the cartoon monsters and their silly story… until, that is, about a half hour into the movie, when it was time to make an impression of my teeth so the crown would fit properly. At this point, I had to bite down on some kind of vile-tasting goop and hold the disgusting concoction in my mouth until it congealed into a vile-tasting replica of my upper and lower teeth. I was no longer able to concentrate on the movie, as the only thing I could concentrate on was trying not to suffocate and willing my breakfast to remain in my stomach. The goop took so long to set that I was certain, by the time the dental hygienist pried it out of my mouth, that the entire movie had gone by without my noticing. But I was surprised to see it had only been about five minutes. Five horrible, gagging, putrid-tasting minutes.

As I sighed in relief and settled back into the movie, I heard the dentist and the hygienist in conversation behind me – there was something about “a bubble” and “another one” and “it should be perfect.” (What? Another WHAT? What are you talking about back there? No… no, no, no. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Really. I don’t care if it’s not perfect. It’s way back behind all my other teeth. No one will ever notice. And I swear even if I notice I won’t complain.) Unfortunately, all of my silent pleading went unnoticed, and the dentist announced that the first impression had a bubble in it, and they’d need another one so the crown would be perfect. Argh!!! Another eternity of trying not to gag on that revolting goopy mess – a witches’ brew created in a pit of sulfur, imbibed with pure evil…

And when THAT was finally over, the hygienist went to work on the temporary crown – which, she told me, is made of acetate and smells like a nail salon. “But it won’t hurt you,” she promised. I did find that a bit hard to believe as she fitted the crown – I’m pretty sure it’s never a good thing for your mouth to taste like you’ve just downed a bottle of nail polish remover. When she was done, I was finally offered a cup of Listerine, which I gratefully swished (well, half-swished, half-dribbled) throughout my chemically-desecrated mouth. There’s no minty-fresh mouthwash in the world that could completely erase all those horrible flavors, but it was probably the best-tasting Listerine I’ve ever had…

The thought of more crowns kind of stresses me out… and when I get stressed out, I grind my teeth… and when I grind my teeth, they start to crack and I need more crowns… oh what a horrible, vile-tasting paradox…