Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Tooth Manifesto

I know it's irrational and ridiculous and only slightly unfounded, but I am completely and totally deathly afraid of the dentist. 

There is pretty much nothing I fear more.  The sounds, the smells, the tension you feel the moment you walk in; The cold, sterile air that fills your lungs; The shaking legs in the waiting room, anxiously anticipating a cleaning or cavity filling; I hate every single aspect.

Perhaps it stems from years of dentistry in my childhood - though looking back, my childhood dentist was actually pretty awesome.  His name was Dr. Meadow, and I used to love going to his office.  His waiting room was filled with toys and a gigantic fish tank.  His actual exam areas had video games and board games.  He used to give you a Game Boy or a Magna Doodle (which I always picked for some reason) to play with while you would sit for fifteen minutes with whatever flavor fluoride you chose (bubblegum!) on your teeth (in those weird Styrofoam mouth things, so uncomfortable), and at the end of the visit, you got to pick a prize!  These were just tons of items to completely distract a child from the fact that they were actually in the devils lair.  Well played, Dr. Meadow.  Well played.

At one point, Dr. Meadow brought my mom back to the exam room, and told her that my baby teeth just didn't want to fall out, and that I needed to get some pulled in order to fit me for a retainer.  I was far too distracted by the awesome power of the Magna Doodle and didn't register what this meant at the time.  However, a few weeks later, my mom brought me back to Dr. Meadow and explained exactly what would be happening.  I didn't think it sounded so terrible - I mean, I used to love having loose teeth, so this was sort of like that, right?  Wrong.  Dr. Meadow may have been an excellent dentist, but a good needle-giver he was not.  To this day I can feel the horrible pain of him jamming a needle filled with novocaine into my gums.  Tears streamed down my face in full force as I felt him twist and pull four of my itty bitty teeth out of my mouth.  At the end of the visit, he shoved gauze into my mouth and handed me one of those paddles with the ball attached with a string.  "She did great!" he told my mom as I sobbed into her leg.  I went home and my mom gave me matza ball soup which I tried to eat while playing nintendo in the basement.  A spider crawled across the table.  I officially hated the dentist.

Over the next few years I endured what many little kids do - countless visits to the dentist and orthodontist, retainer fittings, braces tightening, and, in order to make the braces work better, getting 4 permament molars removed because "her jaw is just too small for such big teeth!".  Thanks for giving me a complex, Doc.  My mom tried to take me back to Dr. Meadow to get the molars pulled but I refused, claiming he wanted to kill me with the needles.  To ease my nerves, my mom made an appointment with a wonderful oral surgeon, Dr. Levine.  He did a wonderful job removing my 4 teeth all at once while I had a mild panic attack, and that was that.  Great.  I was then tooth-pulling free for about 9 years.  Score!

Then my wisdom teeth started to come in.  I was on my own insurance so I went to a new dentist, who told me they all had to come out because "you have gigantic teeth!".  Seriously, enough with that.  I said "okay", and decided the best course of action would be to ignore the problem because, as we all know, avoidance makes things go away.  A few years and a few cleanings passed.  Dr. Boylen kept urging me to "get 'em pulled already", but I knew better than to allow that tricky dentist to decieve me.  One night, I was sitting on my friends bed eating stuffed shells when I felt something in the back of my mouth crack.  I then bit down on something hard.  My wisdom tooth had just broken.

The next day, I called Dr. Levine and begged him to fit me in to remove my tooth.  He said okay, and got me an appointment for the next morning.  Knowing how anxious I usually got before hand, I had my mom drive me to the appointment (for the record, I am 23 years old at this point).  I went in, and Dr. Levine gave me 4 shots of novocaine, but for whatever reason, I was not getting numb.  Finally, he gave me a giant shot in the roof of my mouth (which hurt like total crazy cakes), and pulled the tooth.  Upon getting out of the chair, I immediately felt light headed and fell to the floor, almost passing out.  The nurses helped me up and brought me into the recovery room to give me oxygen.  I spent 2 hours almost passing out from the rogue novacaine floating through my head.  My mom was finally able to drive me home, and I spent the next 6 days too dizzy to even drive.  I decided then that I was done with this whole "tooth pulling" thing.

Of course, I couldn't actually be done, because I still had 3 wisdom teeth.  After avoiding it for another 2 years, the other top wisdom  tooth broke.  I was now living in Brooklyn and had to find a new dentist.  Luckily, I found someone amazing (Dr. Kessler!), who, even as I basically hyperventilated and had a massive panic attack in the chair, held my hand and talked me through the entire thing.  He then sent me on my way, saying "We really need to get those last two out - but you're a mess, so we're going to put you out for it, end of story".  Fair enough.

This brings us now to this coming Friday, when I have an appointment to get the final 2 wisdom teeth (and, for the love of everything chocolate, my last two teeth to ever be) pulled.  They are both on the bottom, and they are both impacted.  One of them is coming in sideways and has pushed so hard into the tooth next to it, that it broke itself and it's neighbor.  I have been having massive anxiety for weeks about this, but if I don't get it done now, my mouth is going to fall apart.  Plus there is the whole issue of my being in pain for weeks from it.  Do I feel like I am going to die at the dentist?  Yes.  Am I aware that this is irrational?  Also yes.  Am I also aware that I have helped to instigate this massive fear by avoiding it for so long, thus creating an even bigger problem than I had initially?  Again, yes.  But here I am, at the end of this long journey of tooth fear.  At this point, I am almost looking forward to getting this over with.  It's been years since I haven't been in some sort of tooth pain or had some sort of jaw tension.  I wish I was getting this done today so that I could stop anticipating it already.  I can only hope for as little pain and soreness as possible and a speedy healing process (and please, please, please no dry socket).

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Those Moments When


Moments are funny things. They can be as fleeting as a passing thought, or as long as the ten seconds that felt like an eternity when you forgot your words on stage. They can be light and fluffy and nonsensical, or heavy realizations you never thought you’d actually stumble across – those cliché moments you’ve heard about, seen illustrated, but never lived; Moments that can make life worth living, while simultaneously making things undeniably real and present.


Those moments when you realize your parents aren’t your perfect superhero’s; When a plastic ball pit becomes a germ-invested booger-fest rather than an endless sea of bottomless fun; When your dream job becomes something that will help you live first, and make you happy second; When saving money isn’t easy because you need to pay bills and eat and live; When you can no longer eat whatever you want without actually focusing on exercising because metabolism is a real thing, and it does catch up with you; When you don’t marry your first love; When you realize you can’t actually have an apartment like Rachel and Monica did, because in New York City, it would cost over $10,000 a month– and not a lot of people make that; When you start thinking about having to take care of your parents, and how on earth you are going to be able to do that when you can just take care of yourself; When the Naked Cowboy in Times Square doesn’t seem like a fun tourist attraction, but a million health violations waiting to happen (no, I will not touch him); When you hope your grandmother will be around long enough to see you walk down the aisle and dance at your wedding; When you walk through Forever 21 and feel old because most of the dresses don’t really fit on your hips correctly; When you have hips; When you move past your first job, feeling jaded by an experience and hoping it doesn’t effect you going forward; When it absolutely effects you going forward; When a productive weekend means you cleaned your entire apartment, did laundry, and went food shopping; When you realize you are growing up.

I have made the startling realization that I am doing just that - growing up.  It's not that I'm unhappy about it.  On the contrary, I'm actually enjoying it all.  This isn't to say that I'm not going to run barefoot through an open fire hydrant, or do cartwheels down the beach and run into the ocean.  It's just that now, these moments count more.  I recognize how fortunate I am to have opportunities to play and leap, take off for a weekend here and there, adopt a cat or get a piercing.  Perhaps they are just more meaningful now.  Or maybe, I'm just appreciating the little things.  I like appreciating the little things.