kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Removal of Wisdom There are certain activities, I’ve decided, that are best undertaken when you are young and fearless and maybe, just maybe, too dumb to know any better. You know, surgery, babies, wisdom teeth removal, braces, etc. Because when you face them when you’re older—well, they’re sick-making with fear. Guess which one I missed? Hint—I’m not pregnant…. Yup. My wisdom teeth come out Thursday. It’s not unexpected—in fact, after a 7 year hiatus from dentistry, I’m surprised all of my teeth aren’t falling out. In fact, the seven year hiatus was because I had a brutal root canal, and after that…well, just roll me in big ole chicken-feathers. Bawk. This spring I finally decided to be a grownup and actually go back to the dentist. They got me in there for a cleaning and evaluation, and after a few ominous noises, decided I had done remarkably well for having been lacking in the dental attention department for seven years. In the last two weeks, I have spent more time in dentist’s offices than I care to contemplate, considering things that are better, in my opinion, left unconsidered. But the upshot of their considering was that two things must be done IMMEDIATELY—the filling of two cavities, and the wisdom teeth MUST COME OUT. They were, in fact, astonished that I was not in pain already, as they were in ghastly shape. I’ve never had fillings before in my entire life. That was last week, and almost-but-not-quite painless except for the vomit-inducing fear that walking into any dental office causes in me. Although I really want to know—when they tell you they don’t want you to feel any pain, why do they ignore you or say “just a second longer” when you indicate that you are? No, it wasn’t bad, certainly not like the root canal I endured seven years ago, but no pain means no pain, dude, not “just a second more and then we’re done…sorry it’s hurting you now.” But I survived. The Darling Husband insisted on driving me home, even though it was just novocaine… But now I’m contemplating Thursday. And surgery. The first honest-to-god-type-surgery I’ve ever had in my life—I’ve never been under anesthesia, I’ve always been home for whatever was done to me. I’m not sure at this point what would be worse—being awake for all the crunching noises, or being put under, which is horrifying in a whole different way. Not to mention how we’re going to pay for all of this, because currently all the estimates don’t quite agree, and while I can safely assume a certain minimum, but the maximum cost may end up frightening. It’s crummy to have lousy dental insurance AND be poor. And there is something undignified about being 32 and practically puking with fear over something that most 18-year-olds sail through with no problems. If I had done this when I was 18, I suppose I would have been done with it and no problems. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to show much on the outside. I went in for the consultation with a hopelessly perky dental assistant to talk about the (gulp) surgery, and she kept remarking on how calm I seemed. I guess those years on the stage paid off—what I really wanted to do was charge off screaming down the hall. I guess I’m my son’s mom, alright…. Our two kitties couldn’t be more different. When we have to crate them up and take them to the vet-—ever a pleasant experience—Fitz will simply howl. And freak. Ungodly wails to raise the dead. And he will keep howling as long as the car is in motion, and his little eyes get so big that you’d think his eyelids were meeting on the back of his skull. My Miro is, at first glance, a more stoic soul…. He never cries in the car, or freaks, he just crouches in the bottom of his cage, waiting for his doom to overtake him, hyperventilating. I feel much akin to Miro on the way to the vet’s these days—stuck in the cage, on the relentless rails of time to the place where they are going to slice into my mouth. Like him, I can’t seem to breathe right, although I look calm enough if you don’t know me fairly well. It’s a little hard to see the fur standing straight up along my spine with the shirt I’m wearing. For some reason they don’t seem to believe me when I tell them I’m afraid. “You don’t look or act afraid”, they say. What more do you want from me? I wonder, looking at the string of variously perky assistants, hygienists,and golf-playing dentists. I finally decided to be upfront with all these people, and as much as my New England soul rebels against it, I have taken to calling up the dentist and the oral surgeon and telling them that I had a horrible experience and now am very much afraid of dentistry. I have told them—I am desperately afraid of pain—please don’t hurt me—but because I’m neither wailing nor puking on their doormats, they don’t seem to believe me. I wonder if they actually would prefer someone who shows fear more easily than I do. Sometimes I wonder if it’s something to do with my size. There has always been an assumption out there, for as long as I can remember that if you’re big, like I am big, you feel less. As if there’s only so much emotion doled out to each person, and in littler people it’s concentrated, and so they “feel things more” and if you’re my size, the allotted amount of emotion is somehow more diffused through all that big body, so you can’t possibly feel as intensely as someone of “normal” size. I’ve seen it happen –women of more usual dimensions have hangnails, and everyone commiserates. A person of weight or height can have a very real crisis, and people turn away in disgust. They are already allowing you to live—oddball that you are—do you have to make a fuss, too? It’s not an accident that the stereotype of the class clown is the chubby child—no one wants to hear the troubles of someone fat, or tall, or different. It’s possible I’m projecting. The Darling Husband is in a certain amount of sympathy with my fears, but I’m not sure even he knows how far down to my bones it goes. He has much different pain tolerances than I. But I still can’t breathe too well. Miro and I, on the way to the vet and god-knows-what fate, hyperventilating on the bottom of the cage. 5:31 p.m. - 2002-07-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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