Steve In Cleveland
Well-known member
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- Joined
- Apr 10, 2012
- Messages
- 550
- Location
- Cleveland, OH (USA)
(or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Dentist)
No one sets out to have nasty teeth. You don’t stand facing the mirror twice a day, thinking, “I could brush my teeth now, but I choose not to.” There’s no motivational poster that says, “Today is the first day of what will turn out to be twenty years of dental neglect.” It doesn’t work that way.
It’s more like overdue library books. You start out with good intentions: posting the due date receipt on your refrigerator, setting the books on the table by the front door. After a while, they go forgotten, perhaps covered up by a Chinese take-out menu or a spring jacket. From time to time, they come to mind. “I need to take care of those,” you think to yourself. You start avoiding the library, knowing that your tardy books prevent you from borrowing anyway. Months go by, years. By now, your picture must be posted up on the wall at the library. The fines are probably in the hundreds of dollars. Maybe thousands. At dinner parties, you dread conversations that mention the library. When cornered, you quickly change the subject, or maybe casually throw out a library story of your own: “I tell you what, those card catalog drawers are heavywhen you pull them all the way out!” Meanwhile, the fines keep accumulating, and the books buried underneath your bed are thumping like the Telltale Heart. You’d love to be a normal library patron again, but the problem’s gotten so big...
My name is Steve, and I’m a dentophobic. I’ve lived most of my adult life terrified of one specific moment: the moment I would finally be forced to open my mouth to a dentist. (There was no possibility of my ever going softly into that good dental chair.) I’ve sat quietly at meals where entire chunks of tooth and giant metal fillings have broken free during chewing, casually tucking the hard material in a napkin, wondering if this was the damage that would finally require immediate treatment. I’ve endured sharp, shooting nerve pain and dull throbbing bone pain that lasted days before mercifully subsiding. I’ve chewed food on one side only, then the other, then a specific quarter or eighth of my mouth, to avoid whichever teeth were hurting that day. I’ve switched to softer foods, and then I’ve broken teeth on scrambled eggs and pasta. I remember every meal, every bite, that resulted in a lost piece of me. I’ve mourned each small bit of bone as it fell out.
You might get the impression that I’ve neglected my teeth, but you’d be wrong. I’ve paid such exquisite attention to every single one of them, as they’ve slowly crumbled away... and I’ve done it twice.
[part 1 of a continuing story]
No one sets out to have nasty teeth. You don’t stand facing the mirror twice a day, thinking, “I could brush my teeth now, but I choose not to.” There’s no motivational poster that says, “Today is the first day of what will turn out to be twenty years of dental neglect.” It doesn’t work that way.
It’s more like overdue library books. You start out with good intentions: posting the due date receipt on your refrigerator, setting the books on the table by the front door. After a while, they go forgotten, perhaps covered up by a Chinese take-out menu or a spring jacket. From time to time, they come to mind. “I need to take care of those,” you think to yourself. You start avoiding the library, knowing that your tardy books prevent you from borrowing anyway. Months go by, years. By now, your picture must be posted up on the wall at the library. The fines are probably in the hundreds of dollars. Maybe thousands. At dinner parties, you dread conversations that mention the library. When cornered, you quickly change the subject, or maybe casually throw out a library story of your own: “I tell you what, those card catalog drawers are heavywhen you pull them all the way out!” Meanwhile, the fines keep accumulating, and the books buried underneath your bed are thumping like the Telltale Heart. You’d love to be a normal library patron again, but the problem’s gotten so big...
My name is Steve, and I’m a dentophobic. I’ve lived most of my adult life terrified of one specific moment: the moment I would finally be forced to open my mouth to a dentist. (There was no possibility of my ever going softly into that good dental chair.) I’ve sat quietly at meals where entire chunks of tooth and giant metal fillings have broken free during chewing, casually tucking the hard material in a napkin, wondering if this was the damage that would finally require immediate treatment. I’ve endured sharp, shooting nerve pain and dull throbbing bone pain that lasted days before mercifully subsiding. I’ve chewed food on one side only, then the other, then a specific quarter or eighth of my mouth, to avoid whichever teeth were hurting that day. I’ve switched to softer foods, and then I’ve broken teeth on scrambled eggs and pasta. I remember every meal, every bite, that resulted in a lost piece of me. I’ve mourned each small bit of bone as it fell out.
You might get the impression that I’ve neglected my teeth, but you’d be wrong. I’ve paid such exquisite attention to every single one of them, as they’ve slowly crumbled away... and I’ve done it twice.
[part 1 of a continuing story]