Unpleasantness

I hate the dentist. Well, not the dentist, himself, the person, he's actually a nice guy, I just hate going to the dentist. I don't really want anyone messing around in my mouth, and it hurts to have my jaw open for so long. I find myself wringing my hands and sweating during the whole process and I dread it every time.

I'm pretty sure it's a physiologic reaction I have to very bad memories from when I was 7, and when some terrible oral surgeon pulled and cut 11 teeth out of my mouth, all at once in the hospital. Remember I was 7. I can't imagine doing that to my 7 year old. Then I was allergic to the medicine and that was a whole other scene I won't describe, nor will I describe what probably was a pretty horrible looking mouth for quite some time after, because I really can't remember what it looked like. I'm positive I've just blocked that whole vision out of my mind.

That whole ordeal only snowballed into early braces and years of headgear, a perfectly terrible embarassment that I remember vividly, and then once those braces came off they were replaced with more years of braces and rubber bands and other modern devices of torture.

I won't go into the wisdom teeth experience and how swollen and in pain I was for weeks and then the medicine allergy all over again and how they had to break my teeth with a chisel and hammer just to get them out of my head. No, I'd probably better not go there or you might stop reading.

I'll stop there, but just know the whole person-messing-around-scraping-xraying-poking-prodding-and-picking experience never bodes well with me. The fact that I have to pay large sums of money just to have it all done practically does me in. But the final straw, the absolute last great injustice is the fact that my kids love the dentist, and they love going to the dentist.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE CHILDREN?!?


p.s. Did I mention we all went to the dentist today? 2 1/2 hours for all 4 of us. I think I'll split us up next time.