Novacaine Central awaits...

Ugh. I have a dentist's appointment this afternoon. As an overall medical profession, I hate dentists.

However, I actually like my new dentist. She's kind, honest, and best of all, she listens to me.

I'm the bad patient, letting the health of my mouth slide by. Isn't it amazing what early dental experiences can imprint on a person's mind? It's also scary to think that the links between heart disease and dental health play significantly together.

I was not blessed with good teeth, and in my mind, I blame that directly on my very first dental experience. The first time I visited the dentist was at the age of six or seven. I was looking forward to it; it felt like a very grown up thing to do - go to the dentist just like the adults did. My first teeth were loose - the usual middle two on the bottom. They'd been loose for weeks. My teeth were always bad about actually leaving my mouth no matter how much I wiggled them.

Mom had a dental appointment and included me. I happily crawled up in the chair. The dentist, who was a family friend as well, said something along the lines of, "I hear you have a couple of loose teeth." I happily nodded, because, hey, I was doing one of my very first GROWN UP THINGS.

"Can I look at them?" I opened my mouth to show him. He asked if he could touch them to see how loose they were. I remember quite well that I asked him not to pull them.

"I won't, I just want to see how loose they are." So I let him.

Of course, he reached in there and yanked both of them out. They were loose, but they were not hanging by a thread of skin yet. It hurt! I screamed and jumped out of the chair and ran down the office steps and sat sobbing on the bottom step of his office.

I felt utterly betrayed by the first adult who had ever lied to me. At least, it was such a major lie that I recognized it for what it was. I recognized some childlike sense of what honor was about, and that man was not honorable. From that day on, dentists were out of my life pretty much till I was a junior in high school. Then dental work began to repair years of problems that normally would have been taken care of at regular checkups.

I've visited dentists throughout the years in irregular fashion. But, my teeth have never ever been pretty or straight. I have the kind of teeth that don't get cavities easily, but periodontal disease has been a problem because I'm a mouth breather, as anyone who has ever slept around me can attest!

So, this new dentist was recommended to me recently; I needed to "replace" the former dentist who I'd lost faith in. And, thus far I'm really happy to have found her. I'll like her far better, I know, when the current mess of work is done and I'm back to the stage of regular checkups only.

Today I'm having a lower tooth pulled. It's been loose since I got decked at work about a year ago. It's now at the point of just plain being annoying. We've made a decision together, the dentist and I, about the course of action. Over the next few months I'll be getting all my front upper and lower teeth pulled and partial dentures put in their place. These are the teeth which have been the bane of my dental health ever since the permanent ones came in. And, since I'm OLD, that's been quite a long time! LOL

I'm sure I'll have to undergo a full periodontal cleaning. Yuck and OUCH. The end result will be a nicer smile, I hope. And, with those repairs, my risk of heart problems will be minimized a bunch. When you're an adopted child with no known medical history to draw on, eliminating those risk factors is a good thing!

So, a part of me will go missing in a couple of hours. My pain threshold is very high for most things, but I take twice as much Novacaine/Lidocaine to get numb. I'm gonna sound like that one character of Bill Cosby's when I try to talk, because my mouth won't move right for far longer than usual.

I'm sure it will be a blast to try to eat supper this evening. Maybe I'll have to stock up on McDonald's milkshakes on my way home. But that would mean I'd have to try to speak; scary thought at sounding like someone whose lips have been overly Botoxed.

Kate drags herself away from the computer to get ready to undergo afternoon torture

UPDATE: I survived the dentist today; I have to say that the novacaine part was the best I've ever had - she actually numbed only the necessary areas; other dentists have been so numb happy that I've spent hours coming out of the numbness, with tongue, nose, chin feeling like foreign objects for hours afterward. She and I left the last appt. with some misunderstanding on my part, but I think we're on the same page now. Not sure I'm overly happy about some of the things she talked to me about, but hey, it all makes sense! I've eaten dinner tonight and didn't have to fight eating 'around' the loose tooth for the first time in months. I can't use a straw for awhile because of the potential for a dry socket, but I'm not prone to using straws anyway. So, tomorrow, I'll set up an appointment with the periodontist and continue this dental journey one step at a time.