Family Alive

I don’t hate dentists personally, but I really despise going to the dentist, like most people.  I’ve got pretty good teeth, and so I’ve been very very lucky to have had fairly good experiences with dentists.  Even years of orthodontics didn’t leave me with a bad feeling about them.  And Brian knows when I go to the dentist, I’ll come home glowing with the praises I’ve heard about my "Hollywood smile" (should be after all the $$ that went into making them beautifully straight!).  Usually, it’s just a regular cleaning and exam.  I haven’t had a filling in YEARS.  I do have very sensitive gums (and I’m notorious for not flossing – Brian flosses enough for both of us, I feel), and so I do hate when a hygienist isn’t very gentle. 

But today I had a tiny filling that the dentist had mentioned in July that needed to be taken care of after my cleaning. ARG.  I started stressing about it last night, and I was just grumpy this morning as I left.  The hygienist is my least favorite – not very gentle, and of course my gums were sore when she was done.  "You’ve done a really great job," she said.  Sure felt like she was scraping hard and catching my gums with the probe-y thing.  Then the dentist looked at the tiny "pit" in my tooth, and despite my saying that maybe it really wasn’t anything to worry about, he thought we should do it.  Really quick, he said, and it probably doesn’t even need novocaine.  He started drilling and after about 15 seconds he said, "I think maybe we should numb it."  ARG, though I had definitely been feeling the grinding.   He numbed it up, chatted with me for a few minutes and started again.  He hadn’t waited very long, though and I could still definitely feel all the drilling.  He finished up, and my mouth was getting progressively more numb as I got up to leave.  Now I’m at home and my mouth is fully numb on one side, and I didn’t enjoy my tasty lunch of leftover Chicken Divan and a piece of yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Bummer.  Maybe I won’t have to worry about getting a filling for another couple of years… (fingers crossed)…