Mistress of pain

He drilled into my tooth and I didn't even flinch!! No Novocaine or numbing agent of any kind, and, while I was gripping the chair so tightly that I expected to see marks on the plastic and my body was so tense you probably could actually bounce things off of it, I didn't so much as wince. Am stoic and Vulcan-like!

Of course, he was operating on one of my dead, way-post-root canal teeth. He and all the staff kept saying how it couldn't possibly hurt, since the nerve had been long removed; they wouldn't be touching my gums; using a pain blocker would freeze up my nose for hours (itching that can't be relieved is a serious threat!!), but I Did. Not. Believe. As I am the queen of referred pain and have an extremely sensitive hurt = thrashing! reflex, and having experienced the ways of this particular dentist before (his track record to date is exactly 100% breaking promises of "it won't hurt a bit," and tends to giggle nervously -which is NOT reassuring - when you inform him that it does, in fact, still hurt like a sunuvabitch and thus are demanding MORE NOVOCAINE. NOW.), I told them to just shoot me up with the usual double dose. After a chorus of protest I did let them go for a trial drilling, sure I would be proven painfully right. Happily, I was wrong and so let them finish the job.

I'm glad I didn't force the issue (I'm not really sure I could have, anyway, but it was nice to try), but it was still very stressful. No matter how pain-free the procedure, having someone manhandle your gums, feeling a tool rooting around your mouth that screams like an army of cracked-out, pissed-off mosquitoes (nothing like the sound of the drill in your body to cut though the brain straight into the fear center), smelling the stink of metal-pulverized enamel, all the time anticipating a lance of white-hot nerve fire that would cause me to toss my head which would cause the doctor to drill my tongue and would...you get the idea - not fun. If I need any more incentive to floss every night and brush several times a day, I only need reflect on some of these not-at-all-misty-colored memories in the chair of (most of the time) pain.