Episode 191 : Dial D for Dentist - Part 2

That wasn't the first trick he played on me.

After removing the wiring that kept my jaws together, we had begun working on stretching my cheek muscles. I told him I could only open my mouth enough to put a spoon inside, and that too an empty one.

'Well, we have a rubber plug that we use to stretch cheek muscles. Just open your mouth and push it in as much as you can.'

I tried for a few minutes and put one end in by half an inch. He took one look at my progress, told me to open my mouth and jammed the damned thing in.

My eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

'I will be back after fifteen minutes' he said and calmly left.

I thought of all foul-mouthed words I wanted to say but could say not one of them. I waited impatiently for fifteen minutes. The seconds needle ticked slowly, I could have sworn each second in that clock was actually two!

He came in twenty agonising minutes later.

My eyes must have shown my happiness.

'I will be back after another fifteen minutes.'

I almost screamed my lungs out.

Back to the root canal treatment...

I had gotten used to the tooth being scraped but when the dentist began poking in the root area, I begn to get restless. Screaming would have frightened them.

In hindsight, I should have yelled like Tarzan!

I first gripped the handrest to distract myself but gave up and began clenching my fists. After clenching and unclenching, the pain in my palms overrode the pain in my gums.

That's when I heard the dentist exclaim 'There's a shard in here!'

The surgeon got up and examined the tooth that had broken all the way to the root.

'Wha?' I asked, feeling dumb not being able to speak whole words.

'Oh nothing, you have a shard stuck in your gumline. We'll take it out now' the surgeon replied. Before I could gather my wits, he returned with an implement and yanked the offending bit of tooth out.

I was too shocked to react.

'See, it was nothing at all' he said nonchalantly.

I began to feel a needle poke around in my gums, and then something getting screwed in. Or maybe the anaesthesia was causing me to imagine things. I knew I wasn't getting a titanium implant. I was past caring- they could do what they wanted to do.

One tooth down, two more to go.

Two teeth down, one more to go.

Three teeth down, and I was ready to go.

What made all of that worthwhile were his parting words that night.

'For dinner have something cold. Nothing solid or warm. Stick to ice-cream without nuts. Just plain ice-cream, any flavour.'