Hole In My Head

I have a hole in my head. It's one that shouldn't be there. Yesterday I was sitting in the living room minding my own business, chewing my lunch (which by the way was not crunchy, chewy, or hard in any way whatsoever) when I suddenly felt something hard in the side of my mouth that felt like it was in the wrong place. I gently swirled my tongue around separating the hard thing from my lunch and discovered that it was a filling.

Oh No! This just couldn't be! I felt a stomach dropping sense of dismay and realized that the dreaded fear of the DENTIST was about to overtake my system with a resounding EEEECK! I have a terror of dentists. It is not the dentist fault and I have to say that I have never had a bad experience with a dentist other than having your mouth stretched to the point where you look like a deranged Brat doll when you leave his office, and the scattered drilling fiasco when the deadening agent has not quite taken affect, otherwise my trips to the dentist are no more horrifying than anyone else. No my fear of the dentist is completely unreasonable.

That is why when 16 yrs ago, while on a trip home to Newfoundland, I lost a chunk of a tooth and had to have a root canal on a tooth that was vastly overdo for some servicing, and when the dentist completed the work he had said I would need to cap the tooth in Ontario, which is where I was living at the time, because the work he had done needed to cure before it was capped, I decided in all of my great dental wisdom (aka fear) decided to ignore that suggestion and so for 16 years I have had an uncapped, root canaled, stuffed full of lead tooth in my head that was a time bomb waiting to go off. And go off it did in a very timely manner this week.

Remember the blog post last week that hinted at the end-of-summer money blues that most teachers experience in August. Well we are in the depths of those blues as we speak.... We have enough to cover our bills but THAT"S IT, no more money than that. (sigh) A trip to the dentist means money. A crapped out root canal means lots of money. Our dentist has the money police for a receptionist. You can not go to the dentist without a slap up the side of the head if you even remotely look like you might forget to pay on the way out the door. (Frankly I'm more afraid of her than I am of the dentist! and she is a petite little young Chinese woman who looks like she might blow over in a good wind!!) So I sit and wait in fear and anxiety while the date of my appointment which I called and requested right away after the chunk of lead, and I might add some suspiciously enamel looking stuff came out of my mouth, looms closer.

Meanwhile, in my mouth, I have a sharp edged nasty and gross looking black tooth that would make the worst pirate proud. The day the filling fell out my tongue looked like it had been scored a hundred times by a little razor that just so happened to be in my mouth right where my tongue wanted to sit. Ouch! By night I was in such agony that I could not speak properly. While this may be a blessing in some ways it hurt a lot and I was beginning to wonder if I would make it through the week until such time as I was able to get to my dental appointment and my tongue was swollen and looked like a chunk of raw meat. Nasty, I say, just plain nasty.

I was at my wits end when Hubby told me the story of his seniour officer in the Canadian Rangers using his leatherman to file the tooth of his girlfriend on a camping trip when she had a chunk of tooth break and fall off. I was desparate and by this time willing to pretty much try anything and so out came the leatherman that I had given Hubby for Christmas a few years ago.... damn it all there was no file. That is when Daughter #2 stepped up to the plate. She had been watching as her mom had sat on the edge of the bed in tears because of the pain and inability to do anything about it. Remember a few weeks ago I told you all about her magic bag that she carries around just in case she meets up with a dragon or fairies??? Ah yes, the wonderful bag! Daughter #2 had been listening to my frustrated and rather garbled swearing as my tooth continued to slash my tongue and she heard when my frustration hit all new heights when the leatherman did not produce a file. Out came said bag and out came a nail file that I thought I had lost 6 months ago..... Great now I could do something about the razor that was wreaking havoc with my tongue. I stood in the bathroom wih Hubby holding the light for me (we still have got lights hooked up in either of the bathrooms and proceeded to file down my tooth. A few minutes later I hit my bed with a nicely filed tooth that was as smooth as a baby's a--. Problem. The tooth has been filed so smooth that I'm not sure the dentist will be able to do anything. So there may be a little dental surgery in my future to remove said offending tooth. Gee I wish there really were a Tooth Fairy!