Teeth-ing Troubles- I.

If you are looking for your daily dose of laughter in this post, you’ll be thoroughly disappointed. I am in a lot of pain, and humor is the last thing I can sense now.

It so happened that I hurt my cheeks while having some popcorn. And I totally forgot about it. The next day, I woke up with tremendous toothache. Thinking that it must be the popcorn, I tried to fix things with a toothpick. The problem got worse. By the evening, my entire right jaw, right neck, and my right ear was throbbing with pain. Not to mention the fever. So I went to the doctor for the routine checkup. And then....

It’s very easy to write about funny stuff. But your pain and your insecurities, not so much.

If there is one thing that could turn me to jelly out of fear, it is the sight of blood. Doctors are a special breed of people I genuinely fear. But things you fear the most keep coming back to you again and again. Somehow, I keep having to meet my dentist every six months. I still shiver when I think of the last surgery. I’ve had some of the weirdest encounters with dentists right from age five. I could probably write a dozen posts on that alone. 

Coming to wisdom teeth, I had my first one operated at age eighteen. The dentist was a muscular, hairy man, about 6 feet tall who looked like the devilish version of Kumar Sanu. I still remember the way he had towered over me, blocking the lights from my face, had caught my wrists with his hairy hands and had pinned me down before he mercilessly punched an injection into my gums. I was so shocked by the way he had grabbed me that I could hardly protest. The toothache had seemed nothing compared to the mental trauma I’d felt on being treated that way. Of course he was the doctor and he knew what he was doing. But I never again went back to him, or to a male doctor for that matter.

My new dentist is a lovely looking Punjabi lady with smooth, hairless hands. She is barely a few years older than me and is very sweet. This time, she checked me thoroughly, and after an agonizing scrutiny for about 15 minutes and constantly gurgling and spitting blood, she decided that I needed a tooth extraction.

Me: What? But it was just popcorn.

Naah, the popcorn was in no way responsible, she found no popcorn, it was the wisdom tooth causing the pain and the fever.

Dentist: Get it extracted. Come Sunday evening. I am writing the list of antibiotics and pain killers you must take......

Me: Hey hang on, you mean this Sunday? Four days from now? But I need some time to be mentally prepared. 

Dentist: Girl, I would be with the scalpel and scissors, not you.

And this brought afresh the memories of the last time.

To add insult to the injury, mom tries to pacify me. She says- Toothache is much better than labor pains. What would you do then?

And the dentist says- Ah, with such an irregular set of dentition, problems are sure to arise. But then, you have to pay a price for having a sweet smile.

Very funny.

So Sunday evening it is then. And knowing me, I know that I am gonna worry myself sick the next four days. I am gonna behave badly with friends, am gonna be irritated and restless throughout the day, am gonna cry for no reason, and am gonna get mad at everything and everybody.

And I wonder, what would I do with so much of wisdom? This is the third one.

BTW, I just looked at the prescription and found out another reason why I could never become a doctor. I do not have an illegible handwriting.

To be continued..................

sunshine.